THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •   BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •   BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE   SONG   OF 
THREE   FRIENDS 


BY    ^ 

JOHN   G.^EIHARDT 

AUTHOR  OF 

"THX  80NQ  OF  HUGH  QLAU  •• 
"  TMK  gUlST,"    ITC. 


Ntto  gorfe 

THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1921 

All  rights  rettrvtd 


COPYRIGHT,  1919, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  clectrotyped.    Published  February,  1919. 


Xorinooti  13rrss 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Bancroft  Library 
toi> 


I 

TO   HILDA 


Oiov  TO  yXvKvfjiaXov  cpevOcrai  a/cpu>  iif  vo-Sa> 

a/c/oov  fir  aKporara)  *  AeAa^ovro 

ov  ftav  CKXeAa^ovr*,  aXX*  OVK  f&vvavr  firi 


NOTE 

THE  following  narrative,  though  complete  in 
itself,  is  designed  to  be  the  first  piece  in  a  cycle 
of  poems  dealing  with  the  fur  trade  period  of 
the  Trans-Missouri  region.  "The  Song  of  Hugh 
Glass,"  which  was  published  in  the  fall  of  1915, 
is  the  second  in  the  series. 

The  four  decades  during  which  the  fur  trade 
flourished  west  of  the  Missouri  River  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  typical  heroic  period,  differing  in  no 
essential  from  the  many  other  great  heroic  periods 
that  have  made  glorious  the  story  of  the  Aryan 
migration.  Jane  Harrison  says  that  heroic  char- 
acters do  not  arise  from  any  peculiarity  of  race 
or  even  of  geographical  surroundings ;  but  that, 
given  certain  social  conditions,  they  may  and  do 
appear  anywhere  and  at  any  time.  The  heroic 
spirit,  as  seen  in  heroic  poetry,  we  are  told,  is  the 
outcome  of  a  society  cut  loose  from  its  roots,  of 
a  time  of  migrations,  of  the  shifting  of  popula- 
tions. Such  conditions  are  to  be  found  during 
the  time  of  the  Spanish  conquests  of  Central  and 
vii 


viii  NOTE 

South  America;  and  they  are  to  be  found  also 
in  those  wonderful  years  of  our  own  West,  when 
wandering  bands  of  trappers  were  exploring  the 
rivers  and  the  mountains  and  the  plains  and  the 
deserts  from  the  British  possessions  to  Mexico, 
and  from  the  Missouri  to  the  Pacific. 

As  a  result  of  our  individualistic  tendencies, 
our  numerous  jostling  nationalities,  and  our 
materialistic  temper,  we  Americans  are  prone 
to  regard  the  Past  as  being  separated  from  us  as 
by  an  insurmountable  wall.  We  lack  the  sense 
of  racial  continuity.  For  us  it  is  almost  as  though 
the  world  began  yesterday  morning;  and  too 
much  of  our  contemporary  literature  is  based 
upon  that  view.  The  affairs  of  antiquity  seem 
to  the  generality  of  us  to  be  as  remote  as  the 
dimmest  star,  and  as  little  related  to  our  activi- 
ties. But  what  we  call  the  slow  lapse  of  ages  is 
really  only  the  blinking  of  an  eye.  Sometimes 
this  sense  of  the  close  unity  of  all  time  and  all 
human  experience  has  come  upon  me  so  strongly 
that  I  have  felt,  for  an  intense  moment,  how  just 
a  little  hurry  on  my  part  might  get  me  there  in 
time  to  hear  ^Eschylus  training  a  Chorus,  or  to 
see  the  wizard  chisel  still  busy  with  the  Parthenon 
frieze,  or  to  hear  Socrates  telling  his  dreams  to 
his  judges.  It  is  in  some  such  mood  that  I  ap- 


NOTE  ix 

proach  that  body  of  precious  saga-stuff  which 
I  have  called  the  Western  American  Epos;  and 
I  see  it,  not  as  a  thing  in  itself,  but  rather  as  one 
phase  of  the  whole  race  life  from  the  beginning ; 
indeed,  the  final  link  in  that  long  chain  of  heroic 
periods  stretching  from  the  region  of  the  Euphrates 
eastward  into  India  and  westward  to  our  own 
Pacific  Coast. 

Like  causes  produce  like  effects;  and  as  we 
follow  the  Aryan  migration,  we  find  that,  over 
and  over  again,  heroic  periods  occur ;  and  out  of 
each  period  have  grown  epic  and  saga,  celebrat- 
ing the  deeds  of  the  heroes.  In  India  we  find  the 
Mahabharata  and  Ramayana;  in  Persia,  the 
Shah  Nameh ;  among  the  Greeks,  the  Homeric 
poems;  in  Rome,  the  ^Eneid;  in  Germany,  the 
Niebelungenlied ;  in  France,  the  Chanson  de  Ro- 
land; in  the  Scandinavian  countries,  the  sagas 
and  the  Eddaic  poems;  in  the  British  Isles,  the 
Arthurian  and  Cuchulain  cycles.  The  Race  crosses 
the  Atlantic,  and  the  last  lap  of  the  long  west- 
ward journey  is  begun.  Still  another  typical  heroic 
period  develops;  and  where  shall  we  find  its 
epic  ?  Certainly  not  in  Hiawatha,  which  is  not 
concerned  with  our  race,  and  but  little  with  the 
real  American  Indian,  for  that  matter.  Certainly 
not  in  Evangeline,  which  is  typical  neither  in 


x  NOTE 

matter  nor  manner.  Nor  is  it  likely  ever  to  be 
written  on  a  theme  concerned  with  the  original 
Colonies,  for  the  reason  that  in  the  Colonies 
society  was  never  cut  loose  from  its  roots.  The 
true  American  Epos  was  developed  between  the 
Missouri  River  and  the  Pacific  Ocean  in  ap- 
proximately the  first  four  decades  of  the  iQth 
century.  When  the  settlers  began  to  cross  the 
Missouri,  the  end  of  the  epic  period  was  in  sight. 

As  has  been  the  case  with  all  similar  periods, 
a  great  body  of  legend,  concerned  with  heroic 
deeds,  grew  up  about  those  men  who  explored 
that  vast  wilderness  in  search  of  furs.  These 
stories,  which  formerly  circulated  throughout  the 
West  as  oral  tradition,  are  now,  in  the  main, 
known  only  to  specialists  in  Western  history; 
for  they  are  to  be  found  chiefly  in  contemporary 
journals  and  books  of  travel  long  since  out  of 
print  and  difficult  to  obtain.  Any  one  who  has 
taken  the  trouble  to  explore  that  spacious  and 
comparatively  little  known  field  of  American 
history  will  be  likely  to  believe  with  me  that  the 
heroes  of  that  time  were  the  direct  descendants, 
in  the  epic  line,  of  all  the  heroes  of  the  race  that 
have  been  celebrated  in  song  and  saga. 

It  would  seem  that  we  are  now  entering  upon  a 
period  in  which  such  a  work  as  I  propose  might 


NOTE  xi 

logically  be  written,  if  we  are  to  accept  the  theory 
of  George  Edward  Woodberry.  He  tells  us  that 
those  literary  works  which  embody  represent- 
ative epochs  appear  upon  what  he  terms  "water- 
sheds of  history" ;  that  is  to  say,  at  those  times 
when  an  old  order  is  passing  away,  when  men  look 
forward  hopefully  or  fearfully  to  new  things,  and 
backward  a  little  wistfully  to  things  that  have 
been.  That  is  the  state  of  the  modern  world. 
We  are  experiencing  the  wane  of  individualism ; 
we  are  beginning  to  think  in  terms  of  the  group ; 
and  already  reactionary  voices  are  being  raised 
in  defence  of  the  good  old  days  when  a  man  could 
do  as  it  pleased  him  to  do.  And  if  we  seek  for 
that  moment  in  our  national  life  when  individual- 
ism was  most  pronounced,  we  shall  find  it  in  the 
romantic  period  with  which  I  am  concerned; 
for  in  that  time  society  did  not  exist  in  the  Trans- 
Missouri  country,  and  there  was  no  law  but  the 
whim  of  the  daring  and  the  strong. 

Obviously,  in  attempting  to  embody  such  a 
period  in  a  literary  work,  it  is  necessary  to  con- 
centrate upon  one  representative  portion  of  it. 
Fortunately,  this  can  be  done  without  sacrifice 
and  without  resorting  to  fictitious  means.  The 
story  of  the  two  expeditions  that  ascended  the 
Missouri  River  under  the  leadership  of  Ashley 


xii  NOTE 

and  Henry  of  St.  Louis  in  the  years  1822  and 
1823,  comprehends  every  phase  of  the  life  of  the 
epoch  and  covers  the  entire  Trans-Missouri 
region  from  the  British  boundaries  to  Santa  Fe, 
and  from  St.  Louis  to  the  Spanish  Settlements  of 
California.  Furthermore,  of  all  the  bands  of 
trappers  and  traders  that  entered  the  wilderness 
during  those  years,  none  experienced  so  many 
extraordinary  adventures  as  did  the  Ashley- 
Henry  men.  The  story  of  their  exploits  and 
wanderings  constitutes  what  I  would  call  the 
Ashley-Henry  Saga;  and  it  is  upon  this  that 
I  am  basing  my  cycle. 

The  first  printed  version  of  the  present  story 
is  to  be  found  in  the  files  of  a  short-lived  periodical 
known  as  The  Western  Souvenir,  from  which  it 
was  copied  by  the  Western  Monthly  Review  for 
July,  1829.  The  Missouri  Intelligencer  for 
September  4,  1829,  and  Howe's  "Historical  Col- 
lections of  the  Great  West "  contain  practically 
the  same  version  of  the  tale.  A  matter-of-fact 
reference  to  the  episode  is  made  on  page  298 
of  the  Letter  Book  of  the  Superintendent  of 
Indian  Affairs,  now  among  the  manuscripts  of 
the  Kansas  Historical  Society  at  Topeka. 

I  wish  to  express  a  sense  of  obligation  to  Mr. 
Doane  Robinson,  Secretary  of  the  State  His- 


NOTE  xiii 

torical  Society  of  South  Dakota,  for  placing  his 
wide  knowledge  of  Western  history  at  my 
disposal. 

JOHN  G.  NEIHARDT. 

BANCROFT,  NEBRASKA, 
1918. 


CONTENTS 

PA6E 

ASHLEY'S  HUNDRED        .    *  .        .       .        .        .       .        i 

THE  UP-STREAM  MEN    . 4 

To  THE  MUSSELSHELL      .  .  .  .  .  .  .         29 

THE  NET  Is  CAST  .        .        .        .  .  •      39 

THE  QUARREL 50 

THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP    .        .       .        .        .        .70 

THE  THIRD  RIDER .      88 

VENGEANCE    .        .        .        .       .  108 


xv 


THE    SONG    OF    THREE 
FRIENDS 

I 

ASHLEY'S  HUNDRED 

Who  now  reads  clear  the  roster  of  that  band  ? 
Alas,  Time  scribbles  with  a  careless  hand 
And  often  pinchbeck  doings  from  that  pen 
Bite  deep,  where  deeds  and  dooms  of  mighty  men 
Are  blotted  out  beneath  a  sordid  scrawl! 

One  hundred  strong  they  flocked  to  Ashley's  call 
That  spring  of  eighteen  hundred  twenty-two; 
For  tales  of  wealth,  out-legending  Peru, 
Came  wind-blown  from  Missouri's  distant  springs, 
And  that  old  sireny  of  unknown  things 
Bewitched  them,  and  they  could  not  linger  more. 
They  heard  the  song  the  sea  winds  sang  the  shore 
When  earth  was  flat,  and  black  ships  dared  the 

steep 

Where  bloomed  the  purple  perils  of  the  deep 
In  dragon-haunted  gardens.    They  were  young. 


2        THE   SONG  OF  THREE   FRIENDS 

Albeit  some  might  feel  the  winter  flung 

Upon  their  heads,  'twas  less  like  autumn's  drift 

Than  backward  April's  unregarded  sift 

On  stout  oaks  thrilling  with  the  sap  again. 

And  some  had  scarce  attained  the  height  of  men, 

Their  lips  unroughed,  and  gleaming  in  their  eyes 

The  light  of  immemorial  surprise 

That  life  still  kept  the  spaciousness  of  old 

And,  like  the  hoarded  tales  their  grandsires  told, 

Might  still  run  bravely. 

For  a  little  span 

Their  life-fires  flared  like  torches  in  the  van 
Of  westward  progress,  ere  the  great  wind  'woke 
To  snuff  them.     Many  vanished  like  a  smoke 
The  blue  air  drinks ;  and  e'en  of  those  who  burned 
Down  to  the  socket,  scarce  a  tithe  returned 
To  share  at  last  the  ways  of  quiet  men, 
Or  see  the  hearth-reek  drifting  once  again 
Across  the  roofs  of  old  St.  Louis  town. 

And  now  no  more  the  mackinaws  come  down, 
Their  gunwales  low  with  costly  packs  and  bales, 
A  wind  of  wonder  in  their  shabby  sails, 
Their  homing  oars  flung  rhythmic  to  the  tide ; 
And  nevermore  the  masted  keelboats  ride 
Missouri's  stubborn  waters  on  the  lone 
Long  zigzag  journey  to  the  Yellowstone. 


ASHLEY'S   HUNDRED  3 

Their  hulks  have  found  the  harbor  ways  that  know 
The  ships  of  all  the  Sagas,  long  ago  — 
A  moony  haven  where  no  loud  gale  stirs. 
The  trappers  and  the  singing  voyageurs 
Are  comrades  now  of  Jason  and  his  crew, 
Foregathered  in  that  timeless  rendezvous 
Where  come  at  last  all  seekers  of  the  Fleece. 

Not  now  of  those  who,  dying,  dropped  in  peace 
A  brimming  cup  of  years  the  song  shall  be : 
From  Mississippi  to  the  Western  Sea, 
From  Britain's  country  to  the  Rio  Grande 
Their  names  are  written  deep  across  the  land 
In  pass  and  trail  and  river,  like  a  rune. 

Pore  long  upon  that  roster  by  the  moon 

Of  things  remembered  dimly.     Tangled,  blear 

The  writing  runs ;  yet  presently  appear 

Three  names  of  men  that,  spoken,  somehow  seem 

Incantatory  trumpets  of  a  dream 

Obscurely  blowing  from  the  hinter-gloom. 

Of  these  and  that  inexorable  doom 

That  followed  like  a  hound  upon  the  scent, 

Here  runs  the  tale. 


II 

THE  UP-STREAM  MEN 

When  Major  Henry  went 
Up  river  at  the  head  of  Ashley's  band, 
Already  there  were  robins  in  the  land. 
Home-keeping  men  were  following  the  plows 
And  through  the  smoke-thin  greenery  of  boughs 
The  scattering  wild-fire  of  the  fruit  bloom  ran. 

Behold  them  starting  northward,  if  you  can. 
Dawn  flares  across  the  Mississippi's  tide; 
A  tumult  runs  along  the  waterside 
Where,  scenting  an  event,  St.  Louis  throngs. 
Above  the  buzzling  voices  soar  the  songs 
Of  waiting  boatmen  —  lilting  chansonettes 
Whereof  the  meaning  laughs,  the  music  frets, 
Nigh  weeping  that  such  gladness  can  not  stay. 
In  turn,  the  herded  horses  snort  and  neigh 
Like  panic  bugles.     Up  the  gangplanks  poured, 
Go  streams  of  trappers,  rushing  goods  aboard 
The   snub-built   keelboats,    squat   with   seeming 

sloth  — 
Baled    three-point    blankets,    blue    and    scarlet 

cloth, 

4 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  5 

Rum,  powder,  flour,  guns,  gauderies  and  lead. 
And  all  about,  goodbyes  are  being  said. 
Gauche  girls  with  rainy  April  in  their  gaze 
Cling  to  their  beardless  heroes,  count  the  days 
Between  this  parting  and  the  wedding  morn, 
Unwitting  how  unhuman  Fate  may  scorn 
The  youngling  dream.     For  O  how  many  a  lad 
Would  see  the  face  of  Danger,  and  go  mad 
With  her  weird  vixen  beauty ;  aye,  forget 
This  girl's  face,  yearning  upward  now  and  wet, 
Half  woman's  with  the  first  vague  guess  at  woe  I 

And  now  commands   are  bellowed,  boat  horns 

blow 

Haughtily  in  the  dawn ;  the  tumult  swells. 
The  tow-crews,  shouldering  the  long  cordelles 
Slack  from  the  mastheads,  lean  upon  the  sag. 
The  keelboats  answer  lazily  and  drag 
Their  blunt  prows  slowly  in  the  gilded  tide. 
A  steersman  sings,  and  up  the  riverside 
The  gay  contagious  ditty  spreads  and  runs 
Above  the  shouts,  the  uproar  of  the  guns, 
The  nickering  of  horses. 

So,  they  say, 

Went  forth  a  hundred  singing  men  that  day ; 
And  girlish  April  went  ahead  of  them. 
The  music  of  her  trailing  garment's  hem 


6          THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Seemed  scarce  a  league  ahead.     A  little  speed 
Might  yet  almost  surprise  her  in  the  deed 
Of  sorcery ;  for,  ever  as  they  strove, 
A  gray-green  smudge  in  every  poplar  grove 
Proclaimed  the  recent  kindling.     Aye,  it  seemed 
That  bird  and  bush  and  tree  had  only  dreamed 
Of  song  and  leaf  and  blossom,  till  they  heard 
The  young  men's  feet;  when  tree  and  bush  and 

bird 

Unleashed  the  whole  conspiracy  of  awe! 
Pale  green  was  every  slough  about  the  Kaw ; 
About  the  Platte,  pale  green  was  every  slough ; 
And  still  the  pale  green  lingered  at  the  Sioux, 
So  close  they  trailed  the  marching  of  the  South. 
But  when  they  reached  the  Niobrara's  mouth 
The  witchery  of  spring  had  taken  flight 
And,  like  a  girl  grown  woman  over  night, 
Young  summer  glowed. 

And  now  the  river  rose, 
Gigantic  from  a  feast  of  northern  snows, 
And  mightily  the  snub  prows  felt  the  tide ; 
But  with  the  loud,  sail-filling  South  allied, 
The  tow-crews  battled  gaily  day  by  day; 
And  seldom  lulled  the  struggle  on  the  way 
But  some  light  jest  availed  to  fling  along 
The  panting  lines  the  laughter  of  the  strong, 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  7 

For  joy  sleeps  lightly  in  the  hero's  mood. 

And  when  the  sky-wide  prairie  solitude 

Was  darkened  round  them,  and  the  camp  was  set 

Secure  for  well-earned  sleep  that  came  not  yet, 

What  stories  shaped  for  marvel  or  for  mirth!  — 

Tales  fit  to  strain  the  supper-tightened  girth, 

Looped  yarns,  wherein  the  veteran  spinners  vied 

To  color  with  a  lie  more  glorified 

Some  thread  that  had  veracity  enough, 

Spun    straightway    out    of    life's    own    precious 

stuff 

That  each  had  scutched  and  heckled  in  the  raw. 
Then  thinner  grew  each  subsequent  guffaw 
While  drowsily  the  story  went  the  rounds 
And  o'er  the  velvet  dark  the  summer  sounds 
Prevailed  in  weird  crescendo  more  and  more, 
Until  the  story-teller  with  a  snore 
Gave  over  to  a  dream  a  tale  half  told. 

And  now  the  horse-guards,  while  the  night  grows 

old, 

With  intermittent  singing  buffet  sleep 
That  surges  subtly  down  the  starry  deep 
On  waves  of  odor  from  the  manless  miles 
Of  summer-haunted  prairie.     Now,  at  whiles, 
The  kiote's  mordant  clamor  cleaves  the  drowse. 
The  horses  stamp  and  blow ;   about  the  prows 


8         THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Dark  waters  chug  and  gurgle ;   as  with  looms 
Bugs  weave  a  drone;    a  beaver's  diving  booms, 
Whereat  bluffs  grumble  in  their  sable  cowls. 
The  devil  laughter  of  the  prairie  owls 
Mocks  mirth  anon,  like  unrepentant  sin. 
Perceptibly  at  last  slow  hours  wear  thin 
The  east,  until  the  prairie  stares  with  morn, 
And  horses  nicker  to  the  boatman's  horn 
That  blares  the  music  of  a  day  begun. 

So  through  the  days  of  thunder  and  of  sun 
They    pressed    to    northward.     Now    the    river 

shrank, 

The  grass  turned  yellow  and  the  men  were  lank 
And    gnarled    with    labor.     Smooth-lipped    lads 

matured 
Twixt    moon    and    moon    with    all    that    they 

endured, 

Their  faces  leathered  by  the  wind  and  glare, 
Their   eyes   grown    ageless   with    the   calm    far 

stare 

Of  men  who  know  the  prairies  or  the  seas. 
And    when    they    reached    the    village    of    the 

Rees, 
One  scarce  might  say,  This  man  is  young,  this 

old, 
Save  for  the  beard. 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  9 

Here  loitered  days  of  gold 
And  days  of  leisure,  welcome  to  the  crews ; 
For  recently  had  come  the  wondrous  news 
Of  beaver-haunts  beyond  the  Great  Divide  — 
So  rich  a  tale  'twould  seem  the  tellers  lied, 
Had  they  not  much  fine  peltry  to  attest. 
So  now  the  far  off  River  of  the  West 
Became  the  goal  of  venture  for  the  band ; 
And  since  the  farther  trail  lay  overland 
From  where  the  Great   Falls  thundered  to  no 

ear, 

They  paused  awhile  to  buy  more  ponies  here 
With  powder,  liquor,  gauds  and  wily  words. 
A  horse-fond  people,  opulent  in  herds, 
The  Rees  were ;   and  the  trade  was  very  good. 

Now  camped  along  the  river-fringing  wood, 
Three  sullen,  thunder-brewing,  rainless  days, 
Those    weathered    men   made    merry    in    their 

ways 

With  tipple,  euchre,  story,  jest  and  song. 
The  marksmen   matched   their  cleverness;    the 

strong 

Wrestled  the  strong;    and  brawling  pugilists 
Displayed  the  boasted  power  of  their  fists 
In  stubborn  yet  half  amicable  fights. 
And  whisky  went  hell-roaring  through  the  nights 


io       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Among  the  lodges  of  the  fuddled  Rees. 
Thus  merrily  the  trappers  took  their  ease, 
Rejoicing  in  the  thread  that  Clotho  spun ; 
For  it  was  good  to  feel  the  bright  thread  run, 
However  eager  for  the  snipping  shears. 

O  joy  long  stifled  in  the  ruck  of  years! 
How  many  came  to  strange  and  bitter  ends! 
And  who  was  merrier  than  those  three  friends 
Whom  here  a  song  remembers  for  their  woe  ? 

Will  Carpenter,  Mike  Fink  and  Frank  Talbeau 

Were  they  —  each  gotten  of  a  doughty  breed ; 

For  in  the  blood  of  them  the  ancient  seed 

Of  Saxon,  Celt  and  Norman  grew  again. 

The  Mississippi  reared  no  finer  men, 

And  rarely  the  Ohio  knew  their  peers 

For  pluck  and  prowess  —  even  in  those  years 

When  stern  life  yielded  suck  but  to  the  strong. 

Nor  in  the  hundred  Henry  took  along 

Was  found  their  match  —  and  each  man  knew  it 

well. 

For  instance,  when  it  suited  Mike  to  tell 
A  tale  that  called  for  laughter,  as  he  thought, 
The  hearer  laughed  right  heartily,  or  fought 
And  took  a  drubbing.     Then,  if  more  complained, 
Those  three  lacked  not  for  logic  that  explained 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  n 

The  situation  in  no  doubtful  way. 

"Me  jokes  are  always  funny"  Mike  would  say; 

And  most  men  freely  granted  that  they  were. 

A  lanky,  rangy  man  was  Carpenter, 

Quite  six  feet  two  from  naked  heel  to  crown ; 

And,  though  crow-lean,  he  brought  the  steelyard 

down 

With  twice  a  hundred  notched  upon  the  bar. 
Nor  was  he  stooped,  as  tali  men  often  are ; 
A  cedar  of  a  man,  he  towered  straight. 
One  might  have  judged  him  lumbering  of  gait, 
When  he  was  still ;  but  when  he  walked  or  ran, 
He  stepped  it  lightly  like  a  little  man  — 
And  such  a  one  is  very  good  to  see. 
Not  his  the  tongue  for  quip  or  repartee ; 
His  wit  seemed  slow ;  and  something  of  the  child 
Came   o'er   his   rough-hewn    features,   when   he 

smiled, 

To  mock  the  perching  brow  and  eagle  nose. 
'Twas  when  he  fought  the  true  import  of  those 
Grew  clear,  though  even  then  his  mien  deceived ; 
For    less    in    wrath,     he    seemed,    than    mildly 

grieved  — 

Which  made  his  blows  no  whit  less  true  or  hard. 
His  hair  was  flax  fresh  gleaming  from  the  card ; 
His  eyes,  the  flax  in  bloom. 


12       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  match  in  might, 

Fink  lacked  five  inches  of  his  comrade's  height, 
And  of  his  weight  scarce  twenty  pounds,  they 

say. 

His  hair  was  black,  his  small  eyes  greenish  gray 
And  restless  as  though  feeling  out  of  place 
In  such  a  jocund  plenilunar  face 
That  seemed  made  just  for  laughter.     Then  one 

saw 

The  pert  pugnacious  nose,  the  forward  jaw, 
The  breadth  of  stubborn  cheekbones,  and  one 

knew 

That  jest  and  fight  to  him  were  scarcely  two, 
But  rather  shifting  phases  of  the  joy 
He  felt  in  living.     Careless  as  a  boy, 
Free  handed  with  a  gift  or  with  a  blow, 
And  giving  either  unto  friend  or  foe 
With  frank  good  will,  no  man  disliked  him  long. 
They  say  his  voice  could  glorify  a  song, 
However  loutish  might  the  burden  be ; 
And  all  the  way  from  Pittsburg  to  the  sea 
The  Rabelaisian  stories  of  the  rogue 
Ran  wedded  to  the  richness  of  his  brogue. 
And  wheresoever  boatmen  came  to  drink, 
There  someone  broached  some  escapade  of  Fink 
That  well  might  fill  the  goat-hoofed  with  delight ; 
For  Mike,  the  pantagruelizing  wight, 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  13 

Was  happy  in  the  health  of  bone  and  brawn 

And  had  the  code  and  conscience  of  the  faun 

To  guide  him  blithely  down  the  easy  way. 

A  questionable  hero,  one  might  say : 

And  so  indeed,  by  any  civil  law. 

Moreover,  at  first  glimpse  of  him  one  saw 

A  bull-necked  fellow,  seeming  over  stout ; 

Tremendous  at  a  heavy  lift,  no  doubt, 

But  wanting  action.     By  the  very  span 

Of  chest  and  shoulders,  one  misjudged  the  man 

When  he  was  clothed.     But  when  he  stripped  to 

swim, 

Men  flocked  about  to  have  a  look  at  him, 
Moved  vaguely  by  that  body's  wonder-scheme 
Wherein  the  shape  of  God's  Adamic  dream 
Was  victor  over  stubborn  dust  again ! 

O  very  lovely  is  a  maiden,  when 

The  old  creative  thrill  is  set  astir 

Along  her  blood,  and  all  the  flesh  of  her 

Is  shapen  as  to  music!     Fair  indeed 

A   tall   horse,   lean   of    flank,    clean-limbed    for 

speed, 

Deep-chested  for  endurance !    Very  fair 
A  soaring  tree,  aloof  in  violet  air 
Upon  a  hill !     And  'tis  a  glorious  thing 
To  see  a  bankfull  river  in  the  spring 


I4       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Fight  homeward!     Children  wonderful  to  see  — 

The  Girl,  the  Horse,  the  River  and  the  Tree  — 

As  any  suckled  at  the  breast  of  sod ; 

Dissolving  symbols  leading  back  to  God 

Through  vista  after  vista  of  the  Plan ! 

But  surely  none  is  fairer  than  a  man 

In  whom  the  lines  of  might  and  grace  are  one. 

Bronzed  with  exposure  to  the  wind  and  sun, 
Behold  the  splendid  creature  that  was  Fink! 
You  see  him  strolling  to  the  river's  brink, 
All  ease,  and  yet  tremendously  alive. 
He  pauses,  poised  on  tiptoe  for  the  dive, 
And  momently  it  seems  the  mother  mud, 
Quick  with  a  mystic  seed  whose  sap  is  blood, 
Mysteriously  rears  a  human  flower. 
Clean  as  a  windless  flame  the  lines  of  power 
Run    rhythmic    up    the    stout    limbs,    muscle- 
laced, 

Athwart  the  ropy  gauntness  of  the  waist, 
The  huge  round  girth  of  chest,  whereover  spread 
Enormous  shoulders.     Now  above  his  head 
He  lifts  his  arms  where  big  thews  merge  and 

flow 

As  in  some  dream  of  Michelangelo ; 
And  up  along  the  dimpling  back  there  run, 
Like  lazy  serpents  stirring  in  the  sun, 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  15 

Slow  waves  that  break  and  pile  upon  the  slope 
Of  that  great  neck  in  swelling  rolls,  a-grope 
Beneath  the  velvet  softness  of  the  skin. 
Now  suddenly  the  lean  waist  grows  more  thin, 
The  deep  chest  on  a  sudden  grows  more  deep ; 
And  with  the  swiftness  of  a  tiger's  leap, 
The  easy  grace  of  hawks  in  swooping  flight, 
That  terrible  economy  of  might 
And  beauty  plunges  outward  from  the  brink. 

Thus  God  had  made  experiment  with  Fink, 
As   proving   how   'twere   best   that   men   might 
grow. 

One  turned  from  Mike  to  look  upon  Talbeau  — 

A  little  man,  scarce  five  feet  six  and  slim  — 

And  wondered  what  his  comrades  saw  in  him 

To  justify  their  being  thus  allied. 

Was  it  a  sort  of  planetary  pride 

In  lunar  adoration  ?     Hark  to  Mike : 

"Shure  I  declare  I  niver  saw  his  like  — 

A  skinny  whiffet  of  a  man !     And  yit  — 

Well,  do  ye  moind  the  plisint  way  we  mit 

And  how  he  interjooced  hisself  that  day? 

'Twas  up  at  Pittsburg,  liquor  flowin*  fray 

And  ivrybody  happy  as  a  fool. 

I  cracked  me  joke  and  thin,  as  is  me  rule, 


16       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Looked  round  to  view  the  havoc  of  me  wit ; 

And  ivrywan  was  doubled  up  wid  it, 

Save  only  wan,  and  him  a  scrubby  mite. 

Says  I,  and  shure  me  language  was  polite, 

'And  did  ye  hear  me  little  joke?'  says  I. 

'I    did*    says   he.       'And    can't   ye   laugh,   me 

b'y?' 

'I  can't*  says  he,  the  sassy  little  chap. 
Nor  did  I  git  me  hand  back  from  the  slap 
I  give  him  till  he  landed  on  me  glim, 
And  I  was  countin'  siventeen  of  him 
And  ivry  dancin'  wan  of  him  was  air! 
Faith,  whin  I  hit  him  he  was  niver  there ; 
And  shure  it  seemed  that  ivry  wind  that  blew 
Was  peltin'  knuckles  in  me  face.     Hurroo! 
That  toime,  fer  wance,  I  got  me  fill  of  fun ! 
God  bless  the  little  whiffet !     It  begun 
Along  about  the  shank  of  afthernoon ; 
And  whin  I  washed  me  face,  I  saw  the  moon 
A-shakin'  wid  its  laughther  in  the  shtrame. 
And    whin,    betoimes,    he    wakened    from    his 

drame, 

I  says  to  him,  'Ye  needn't  laugh,  me  b'y : 
A  cliver  little  man  ye  are,'  says  I. 
And  Och,  the  face  of  me !     I'm  tellin'  fac's  — 
Ye'd  wonder  did  he  do  it  wid  an  ax! 
'Twas  foine!    'Twas  art!" 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  17 

Thus,  eloquent  with  pride, 
Mike  Fink,  an  expert  witness,  testified ' 
To  Talbeau's  fistic  prowess. 

Now  they  say 

There  lived  no  better  boatmen  in  their  day 
Than    those   three    comrades;     and    the    larger 

twain 

In  that  wide  land  three  mighty  rivers  drain 
Found  not  their  peers  for  skill  in  marksmanship. 
Writes  one,  who  made  the  long  Ohio  trip 
With  those  boon  cronies  in  their  palmy  days, 
How  once  Mike  Fink  beheld  a  sow  at  graze 
Upon  the  bank  amid  her  squealing  brood ; 
And  how  Mike,  being  in  a  merry  mood, 
Shot  off"  each  wiggling  piglet's  corkscrew  tail 
At  twenty  yards,  while  under  easy  sail 
The  boat  moved  on.     And  Carpenter  could  bore 
A  squirrel's  eye  clean  at  thirty  steps  and  more  — 
So  many  say.     But  'twas  their  dual  test 
Of  mutual  love  and  skill  they  liked  the  best 
Of  all  their  shooting  tricks  —  when  one  stood  up 
At  sixty  paces  with  a  whisky  cup 
Set  brimming  for  a  target  on  his  head, 
And  felt  the  gusty  passing  of  the  lead, 
Hot  from  the  other's  rifle,  lift  his  hair. 
And  ever  was  the  tin  cup  smitten  fair 
c 


r8       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

By  each,  to  prove  the  faith  of  each  anew : 

For  'twas  a  rite  of  love  between  the  two, 

And  not  a  mere  capricious  feat  of  skill. 

"Och,  shure,  and  can  ye  shoot  the  whisky,  Bill?" 

So    Mike   would    end    a   wrangle.     "Damn    it, 

Fink! 

Let's  bore  a  pair  of  cups  and  have  a  drink  !" 
So  Carpenter  would  stop  a  row  grown  stale. 
And  neither  feared  that  either  love  might  fail 
Or  either  skill  might  falter. 

Thus  appear 

The  doughty  three  who  held  each  other  dear 
For  qualities  they  best  could  comprehend. 

Now  came  the  days  of  leisure  to  an  end  — 

The    days    so     gaily  squandered,    that    would 

seem 

To  men  at  length  made  laughterless,  a  dream 
Unthinkably  remote ;   for  Ilion  held 
Beneath  her  sixfold  cerement  of  Eld 
Seems  not  so  hoar  as  bygone  joy  we  prize 
In  evil  days.     Now  vaguely  pale  the  skies, 
The  glimmer  neither  starlight's  nor  the  morn's. 
A  rude  ironic  merriment  of  horns 
Startles  the  men  yet  heavy  with  carouse, 
And  sets  a  Ree  dog  mourning  in  the  drowse, 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  19 

Snout  skyward  from  a  lodge  top.     Sleepy  birds 
Chirp  in  the  brush.     A  drone  of  sullen  words 
Awakes  and  runs  increasing  through  the  camp. 
Thin  smoke  plumes,  rising  in  the  valley  damp, 
Flatten  among  the  leathern  tents  and  make 
The  whole  encampment  like  a  ghostly  lake 
Where  bobbing  heads  of  swimmers  come  and  go, 
As  with  the  whimsy  of  an  undertow 
That  sucks  and  spews  them.     Raising  dust  and 

din, 

The  horse-guards  drive  their  shaggy  rabble  in 
From  nightlong  grazing.     Foyageurs,  with  packs 
Of  folded  tents  and  camp  gear  on  their  backs, 
Slouch  boatward  through  the  reek.     But  when 

prevails 

The  smell  of  frying  pans  and  coffee  pails, 
They    cease    to    sulk    and,    greatly    heartened, 

sing 

Till  ponies  swell  the  chorus,  nickering, 
And  race-old  comrades  jubilate  as  one. 

Out  of  a  roseless  dawn  the  heat-pale  sun 
Beheld  them  toiling  northward  once  again  — 
A  hundred  horses  and  a  hundred  men 
Hushed  in  a  windless  swelter.     Day  on  day 
The  same  white  dawn  overtook  them  on  their 
way; 


20       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

And  daylong  in  the  white  glare  sang  no  bird, 
But  only  shrill  grasshoppers  clicked  and  whirred, 
As  though  the  heat  were  vocal.     All  the  while 
The    dwindling    current    lengthened,    mile    on 

mile, 
Meandrous  in  a  labyrinth  of  sand. 

Now  e'er  they  left  the  Ree  town  by  the  Grand 
The  revellers  had  seen  the  spent  moon  roam 
The  morning,  like  a  tipsy  hag  bound  home. 
A  bubble-laden  boat,  they  saw  it  sail 
The  sunset  river  of  a  fairy  tale 
When  they  were   camped   beside  the   Cannon- 
ball.    ' 

A  spectral  sun,  it  held  the  dusk  in  thrall 
Nightlong  about  the  Heart.     The  stars  alone 
Upon  the  cluttered  Mandan  lodges  shone 
The   night   they   slept    below   the   Knife.     And 

when 

Their  course,  long  westward,  shifted  once  again 
To  lead  them  north,  the  August  moon  was  new. 

The  rainless  Southwest  wakened  now  and  blew 
A  wilting,  worrying,  breath-sucking  gale 
That  roared  one  moment  in  the  bellied  sail, 
Next  moment  slackened  to  a  lazy  croon. 
Now  came  the  first  misfortune.     All  forenoon 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  21 

With  line  and  pole  the  sweating  boatmen  strove 
Along    the    east    bank,    while    the    horseguards 

drove 

The  drooping  herd  a  little  to  the  fore. 
And  then  the  current  took  the  other  shore. 
Straight  on,  a  maze  of  bar  and  shallow  lay, 
The  main  stream  running  half  a  mile  away 
To  westward  of  a  long  low  willow  isle. 
An  hour  they  fought  that  stubborn  half  a  mile 
Of  tumbled  water.     Down  the  running  planks 
The  polesmen  toiled  in  endless  slanting  ranks. 
Now  swimming,  now  a-flounder  in  the  ooze 
Of  some  blind  bar,  the  naked  cordelle  crews 
Sought  any  kind  of  footing  for  a  pull ; 
While  gust-bedevilled  sails,  now  booming  full, 
Now  flapping  slack,  gave  questionable  aid. 

The  west  bank  gained,  along  a  ragged  shade 

Of  straggling  cottonwoods  the  boatmen  sprawled 

And  panted.     Out  across  the  heat-enthralled, 

Wind-fretted  waste  of  shoal  and  bar  they  saw 

The  string  of  ponies  ravelled  up  a  draw 

That  mounted  steeply  eastward  from  the  vale 

Where,  like  a  rampart  flung  across  the  trail, 

A   bluff  rose   sheer.     Heads   low,   yet  loath   to 

graze, 
They  waxed  and  withered  in  the  oily  haze, 


22        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Now  ponies,  now  a  crawling  flock  of  sheep. 
Behind     them    three     slack    horseguards,     half 

asleep, 
Swayed  limply,  leaning  on  their  saddle-bows. 

The  boat  crews,  lolling  in  a  semi-doze, 
Still  watch  the  herd ;   nor  do  the  gazers  dream 
What  drama  nears  a  climax  over  stream, 
What  others  yonder  may  be  watching  too. 
Now  looming  large  upon  the  lucent  blue, 
The  foremost  ponies  top  the  rim,  and  stare 
High-headed  down  the  vacancies  of  air 
Beneath  them ;  while  the  herders  dawdle  still 
And  gather  wool  scarce  halfway  up  the  hill  — 
A  slumbrous  sight  beheld  by  heavy  eyes. 

But  hark !    What  murmuring  of  far-flung  cries 
From  yonder  pocket  in  the  folded  rise 
That  flanks  the  draw  ?    The  herders  also  hear 
And  with  a  start  glance  upward  to  the  rear. 
Their  spurred  mounts  plunge!    What  do  they 

see  but  dust 

Whipped  skyward  yonder  in  a  freakish  gust  ? 
What  panic  overtakes  them  ?     Look  again  ! 
The  rolling  dust  cloud  vomits  mounted  men, 
A  ruck  of  tossing  heads  and  gaudy  gears 
Beneath  a  bristling  thicket  of  lean  spears 
Slant  in  a  gust  of  onset ! 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  23 

Over  stream 

The  boatmen  stare  dumfounded.     Like  a  dream 
In  some  vague  region  out  of  space  and  time 
Evolves  the  swiftly  moving  pantomime 
Before  those  loungers  with  ungirded  loins ; 
Till  one  among  them  shouts  " Assin&oines!" 
And  swelling  to  a  roar,  the  wild  word  runs 
Above  a  pellmell  scramble  for  the  guns, 
Perceived  as  futile  soon.     Yet  here  and  there 
A  few  young  hotheads  fusillade  the  air, 
And  rage  the  more  to  know  the  deed  absurd. 
Some  only  grind  their  teeth  without  a  word ; 
Some  stand  aghast,  some  grinningly  inane, 
While  some,  like  watch-dogs  rabid  at  the  chain, 
Growl  curses,  pacing  at  the  river's  rim. 

So  might  unhappy  spirits  haunt  the  dim 
Far  shore  of  Styx,  beholding  outrage  done 
To  loved  ones  in  the  region  of  the  sun  — 
Rage  goaded  by  its  own  futility ! 

For  one  vast  moment  strayed  from  time,  they  see 
The  war  band  flung  obliquely  down  the  slope, 
The  flying  herdsmen,  seemingly  a-grope 
In  sudden  darkness  for  their  saddle  guns. 
A  murmuring  shock !    And  now  the  whole  scene 
runs 


24        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Into  a  dusty  blur  of  horse  and  man ; 

And  now  the  herd's  rear  surges  on  the  van 

That  takes  the  cue  of  panic  fear  and  flies 

Stampeding  to  the  margin  of  the  skies, 

Till  all  have  vanished  in  the  deeps  of  air. 

Now  outlined  sharply  on  the  sky-rim  there 

The    victors    pause    and    taunt    their    helpless 

foes 

With  buttocks  patted  and  with  thumbs  at  nose 
And  jeers  scarce  hearkened  for  the  wind's  guffaw. 
They  also  vanish.     In  the  sunwashed  draw 
Remains  no  sign  of  what  has  come  to  pass, 
Save  three  dark  splotches  on  the  yellow  grass, 
Where  now  the  drowsy  horseguards  have  their 

will. 

•  1 

At  sundown  on  the  summit  of  the  hill 

The  huddled  boatmen  saw  the  burial  squad 

Tuck  close  their  comrades'  coverlet  of  sod  — 

Weird  silhouettes  on  melancholy  gray. 

And  very  few  found  anything  to  say 

That  night;    though  some  spoke  gently  of  the 

dead, 

Remembering  what  that  one  did  or  said 
At    such    and    such    a   time.     And    some,    more 

stirred 
With  lust  of  vengeance  for  the  stolen  herd, 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  25 

Swore  vaguely  now  and  then  beneath  their  breath. 
Some,  brooding  on  the  imminence  of  death, 
Grew  wistful  of  their  unreturning  years; 
And  some  who  found  their  praying  in  arrears 
Made  shift  to  liquidate  the  debt  that  night. 

But  when  once  more  the  cheerful  morning  light 
Came  on  them  toiling,  also  came  the  mood 
Of  young  adventure,  and  the  solitude 
Sang  with  them.     For  'tis  glorious  to  spend 
One's  golden  days  large-handed  to  the  end  — 
The  good  broadpieces  that  can  buy  so  much ! 
And  what  may  hoarders  purchase  but  a  crutch 
Wherewith  to  hobble  graveward  ? 

On  they  pressed 

To  where  once  more  the  river  led  them  west ; 
And  every  day  the  hot  wind,  puff  on  puff, 
Assailed  them ;  every  night  they  heard  it  sough 
In  thickets  prematurely  turning  sere. 

Then  came  the  sudden  breaking  of  the  year. 

Abruptly  in  a  waning  afternoon 

The  hot  wind  ceased,  as  fallen  in  a  swoon 

With   its   own   heat.     For   hours   the   swinking 

crews 
Had  bandied  scarcely  credible  good  news 


26       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Of  clouds  across  the  dim  northwestward  plain ; 
And  they  who  offered  wagers  on  the  rain 
Found  ready  takers,  though  the  gloomy  rack, 
With  intermittent  rumbling  at  its  back, 
Had  mounted  slowly.     Now  it  towered  high, 
A  blue-black  wall  of  night  across  the  sky 
Shot  through  with  glacial  green. 

A  mystic  change ! 
The    sun    was    hooded    and    the    world    went 

strange  — 

A  picture  world  !    The  hollow  hush  that  fell 
Made  loud  the  creaking  of  the  taut  cordelle, 
The  bent   spar's   groan,   the  plunk  of  steering 

poles. 

A  bodeful  calm  lay  glassy  on  the  shoals ; 
The  current  had  the  look  of  flowing  oil.     , 
They  saw  the  cloud's  lip  billow  now  and  boil  — 
Black  breakers  gnawing  at  a  coast  of  light ; 
They  saw  the  stealthy  wraith-arms  of  the  night 
Grope  for  the  day  to  strangle  it ;  they  saw 
The  up-stream  reaches  vanish  in  a  flaw 
Of  driving  sand  :   and  scarcely  were  the  craft 
Made  fast  to  clumps  of  willow  fore  and  aft, 
When  with  a  roar  the  blinding  fury  rolled 
Upon  them ;   and  the  breath  of  it  was  cold. 
There  fell  no  rain. 


THE  UP-STREAM  MEN  27 

That  night  was  calm  and  clear : 
Just  such  a  night  as  when  the  waning  year 
Has  set  aflare  the  old  Missouri  wood ; 
When  Greenings  are  beginning  to  be  good ; 
And  when,  so  hollow  is  the  frosty  hush, 
One  hears  the  ripe  persimmons  falling  —  plush!  — 
Upon  the  littered  leaves.    The  kindly  time ! 
With  cider  in  the  vigor  of  its  prime, 
Just  strong  enough  to  edge  the  dullest  wit 
Should  neighbor  folk  drop  in  awhile  to  sit 
And  gossip.     O  the  dear  flame-painted  gloam, 
The  backlog's  sputter  on  the  hearth  at  home  — 
How    far    away    that    night !      Thus    many    a 

lad, 

Grown  strangely  old,  remembered  and  was  sad. 
Wolves  mourned  among  the  bluffs.     Like  hanks 

of  wool 
Fog  flecked  the  river.    And  the  moon  was  full. 

A  week  sufficed  to  end  the  trail.     They  came 
To  where  the  lesser  river  gives  its  name 
And  meed  of  waters  to  the  greater  stream. 
Here,    lacking    horses,    they    must    nurse    the 

dream 

Of  beaver  haunts  beyond  the  Great  Divide, 
Build  quarters  for  the  winter  trade,  and  bide 
The  coming  up  of  Ashley  and  his  band. 


28       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

So  up  and  down  the  wooded  tongue  of  land 

That  thins  to  where  the  rivers  wed,  awoke 

The  sound  of  many  axes,  stroke  on  stroke; 

And  lustily  the  hewers  sang  at  whiles  — 

The  better  to  forget  the  homeward  miles 

In  this,  the  homing  time.     And  when  the  geese 

With  cacophonic  councils  broke  the  peace 

Of  frosty  nights  before  they  took  to  wing ; 

When  cranes  went  over  daily,  southering, 

And  blackbirds  chattered  in  the  painted  wood, 

A  mile  above  the  river  junction  stood 

The  fort,  adjoining  the  Missouri's  tide. 

Foursquare  and  thirty  paces  on  a  side, 

A  wall  of  sharpened  pickets  bristled  round 

A  group  of  sod-roofed  cabins.     Bastions  frowned 

From  two  opposing  corners,  set  to  brave 

A  foe  on  either  flank ;  and  stout  gates  gave 

Upon  the  stream,  where  now  already  came 

The  Indian  craft,  lured  thither  by  the  fame 

Of  traders  building  by  the  mating  floods. 


Ill 

TO  THE  MUSSELSHELL 

Now  came  at  dawn  a  party  of  the  Bloods, 

Who  told  of  having  paddled  seven  nights 

To  parley  for  their  people  with  the  Whites, 

The  long  way  lying  'twixt  a  foe  and  foe; 

For  ever  on  their  right  hand  lurked  the  Crow, 

And  on  their  left  hand,  the  Assiniboine. 

The  crane-winged  news,  that  where  the  waters 

join 

The  Long  Knives  built  a  village,  made  them  sad ; 
Because  the  pastures  thereabouts  were  bad, 
Sustaining  few  and  very  scrawny  herds. 
So  they  ha;d  hastened  hither,  bringing  words 
Of  kindness  from  their  mighty  men,  to  tell 
What  welcome  waited  on  the  Musselshell 
Where  stood  the  winter  lodges  of  their  band. 

They  rhapsodized  the  fatness  of  that  land  : 
Lush  valleys  where  all  summer  bison  ran 
To  grass  grown  higher  than  a  mounted  man ! 
Aye,  winter  long  on  many  a  favored  slope 
The  bison  grazed  with  goat  and  antelope, 
29 


30       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Nor  were  they  ever  leaner  in  the  spring ! 

One  heard  the  diving  beaver's  thundering 

In  all  the  streams  at  night ;   and  one  might  hear 

Uncounted  bull  elks  whistle,  when  the  year 

Was  painted  for  its  death.     Their  squaws  were 

good, 

Strong  bearers  of  the  water  and  the  wood, 
With  quiet  tongues  and  never  weary  hands ; 
Tall  as  the  fighting  men  of  other  lands, 
And  good  to  look  upon.     These  things  were  so! 
Why  else  then  should  Assiniboine  and  Crow 
Assail  the  Bloods  ? 

Now  flaring  up,  they  spoke 
Of  battles  and  their  haters  blown  as  smoke 
Before  the  blizzard  of  their  people's  ire, 
Devoured  as  grass  before  a  prairie  fire 
That   licks   the   heavens   when   the   Northwind 

runs! 

But,  none  the  less,  their  warriors  needed  guns 
And   powder.     Wherefor,   let   the  Great  White 

Chief 

Return  with  them,  ere  yet  the  painted  leaf 
Had  fallen.     If  so  be  he  might  not  leave 
This  land  of  peoples  skillful  to  deceive, 
Who,  needing  much,  had  scarce  a  hide  to  sell  — • 
Then  send  a  party  to  the  Musselshell 


TO  THE  MUSSELSHELL  31 

To  trade  and  trap  until  the  grass  was  young 
And  calves  were  yellow.     With  no  forked  tongue 
The  Bloods  had  spoken.     Had  the  White  Chief 
ears  ? 

So  Major  Henry  called  for  volunteers ; 
And  Fink  was  ready  on  the  word  to  go 
"And  chance  the  bloody  naygurs";  then  Tal- 

beau, 

Then  Carpenter ;   and  after  these  were  nine, 
In  whom  young  blood  was  like  a  beading  wine, 
Who  lusted  for  the  venture. 

Late  that  night 
The  Bloods  set  out  for  home.     With  day's  first 

light 

The  dozen  trappers  followed,  paddling  west 
In  six  canoes.     And  whatso  suited  best 
The  whimsies  of  the  savage  or  his  needs, 
The  slim  craft  carried  —  scarlet  cloth  and  beads, 
Some  antiquated  muskets,  powder,  ball, 
Traps,  knives,  and  little  casks  of  alcohol 
To  lubricate  the  rusty  wheels  of  trade ! 

So,  singing  as  they  went,  the  blithe  brigade 
Departed,  with  their  galloping  canoes 
Heeding  the  tune.     They  had  no  time  to  lose; 


32       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

For  long  and  stubborn  was  the  upstream  way, 
And  when  they  launched  their  boats  at  break  of 

day 
They  heard  a  thin  ice  tinkle  at  the  prows. 

A  bodeful  silence  and  a  golden  drowse 
Possessed  the  land.     The  Four  Winds  held  their 

breath 

Before  a  vast  serenity  of  death, 
Wherein  it  seemed  the  reminiscent  Year  — 
A  yearning  ghost  now  —  wrought  about  its  bier 
Some  pale  hallucination  of  its  May. 
Bleak  stretched  the  prairie  to  the  walls  of  day, 
So  dry,  that  where  a  loping  kiote  broke 
Its  loneliness,  it  smouldered  into  smoke : 
And  when  a  herd  of  bison  rumbled  past, 
'Twas  like  a  great  fire  booming  in  a  blast, 
The  rolling  smudge  whereof  concealed  the  flame. 

Proceeding  in  the  truce  of  winds,  they  came 

In  five  days  to  the  vale  the  Poplar  drains. 

A  trailing  flight  of  southbound  whooping  cranes, 

Across  the  fading  West,  was  like  a  scrawl 

Of  cabalistic  warning  on  a  wall, 

And    counselled    haste.     In    seven    days    they 

reached 
The  point  where  Wolf  Creek  empties  in,   and 

beached 


TO  THE  MUSSELSHELL  33 

Their  keels  along  its  dusty  bed.     In  nine, 

Elk  Prairie  and  the  Little  Porcupine, 

Now  waterless,  had  fallen  to  the  rear. 

The  tenth  sun  failed  them  on  the  lone  frontier 

Where  flows  the  turbid  Milk  by  countless  bends 

And  where  Assiniboian  country  ends 

And  Blackfoot  Land  begins.     The  hollow  gloom 

All  night  resounded  with  the  beaver's  boom; 

A  wolf  pack  yammered  from  a  distant  hill ; 

Anon  a  rutting  elk  cried,  like  a  shrill 

Arpeggio  blown  upon  a  flageolet. 

A  half  day  more  their  lifting  prows  were  set 

To  westward ;  then  the  flowing  trail  led  south 

Two  days  by  many  a  bend  to  Hell  Creek's  mouth 

Amid  the  Badlands.     Gazing  from  a  height, 

The  lookout  saw  the  marching  of  the  Night 

Across  a  vast  black  waste  of  peaks  and  deeps 

That  could  have  been  infernal  cinder-heaps, 

The  relics  of  an  ancient  hell  gone  cold. 

That  night  they  saw  a  wild  aurora  rolled 
Above  the  lifeless  wilderness.     It  formed 
Northeastwardly  in  upright  waves  that  stormed 
To  westward,  sequent  combers  of  the  bow 
That  gulfed  Polaris  in  their  undertow 
And  hurtled  high  upon  the  Ursine  Isles 
A  surf  of  ghostly  fire.     Again,  at  whiles, 


34        THE   SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  shimmering  silken  veil,  it  puffed  and  swirled 
As  'twere  the  painted  curtain  of  the  world 
That  fluttered  in  a  rising  gale  of  doom. 
And  when  it  vanished  in  the  starry  gloom 
One  said  "  'Twill  blow  to-morrow." 

So  it  did. 

Ere  noon  they  raised  the  Half  Way  Pyramid 
Southwestward ;      saw    its    wraith-like    summit 

lift 

And  seem  to  float  northwest  against  a  drift 
Of  wind-whipped  dust.     The  lunar  hills  about  — 
Where  late  a  bird's  note  startled  like  a  shout 
The  hush  that  seemed  the  body  of  old  Time  — 
Now  bellowed  where  the  hoofs  of  Yotunheim 
Foreran  the  grizzled  legions  of  the  Snow. 
'Twas  peep  of  day  when  it  began  to  blow, 
A  zephyr  growing  stronger  with  the  light, 
And  now  by  fits  it  churned  the  river  white 
And  whipped  the  voyageurs  with  freezing  spray. 
The  windward  reaches  took  their  breath  away. 
Ghost-white  and  numb  with  cold,  from  bend  to 

bend, 

Where  transiently  the  wind  became  a  friend 
To    drive    them    south,   they   battled;     till    at 

last 
Around  a  jutting  bluff  they  met  a  blast 


TO  THE  MUSSELSHELL  35 

That  choked  as  with  a  hand  upon  their  throats 
The  song  they  sang  for  courage;   hurled   their 

boats 
Against  the  farther  shore  and  held  them  pinned. 

A  sting  of  spitting  snow  was  in  the  wind. 
Southwest  by  west  across  the  waste,  where  fell 
A  murky  twilight,  lay  the  Musselshell  — 
Two  days  of  travel  with  the  crow  for  guide. 
Here  must  they  find  them  shelter,  and  abide 
The  passing  of  the  blizzard  as  they  could. 
The  banks  bore  neither  plum  nor  cottonwood 
And  all  the  hills  were  naked  as  a  hand. 
But  where,  debouching  from  the  broken  land, 
A  river  in  the  spring  was  wont  to  flow, 
A  northward  moving  herd  of  buffalo 
Had  crossed  the  river,  evidently  bound 
From  failing  pastures  to  the  grazing  ground 
Along    the    Milk:     and    where    the    herd    had 

passed 

Was  scattered  bois  de  vache  enough  to  last 
Until  the  storm  abated.     So  they  packed 
Great  blanketfuls  of  sun-dried  chips,  and  stacked 
The  precious  fuel  where  the  wind  was  stilled  — 
A  pocket  hemmed  by  lofty  bluffs  and  filled 
With  mingled  dusk  and  thunder ;   bore  therein 
Canoes  and  cargo,  pitched  their  tents  of  skin 


36        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

About  a  central  heap  of  glowing  chips, 

And  dined  on  brittle  bull-meat  dried  in  strips, 

With  rum  to  wash  it  down. 

It  snowed  all  night. 

The  earth  and  heavens,  in  the  morning  light, 
Were  one  white  fury ;   and  the  stream  ran  slush. 
Two  days  and  nights  the  gale  boomed;    then  a 

hush 
Fell  with  the  sun;      and  when  the  next  dawn 

came  — 

A  pale  flare  flanked  by  mockeries  of  flame  — 
The  river  lay  as  solid  as  the  land. 

Now  caching  half  their  goods,  the  little  band 
Resumed  the  journey,  toiling  under  packs ; 
And  twice  they  felt  the  morning  at  their  backs, 
A  laggard  traveller ;  and  twice  they  saw 
The  sunset  dwindle  to  a  starry  awe 
Beyond  the  frozen  vast,  while  still  they  pressed 
The  journey  —  bearded  faces  yearning  west, 
White  as  the  waste  they  trod.     Then  one  day 

more, 

Southwestward,  brought  them  to  the  jutting  shore 
That  faced  the  goal. 

A  strip  of  poplars  stretched 
Along  a  winding  stream,  their  bare  boughs  etched 


TO  THE  MUSSELSHELL  37 

Black  line  by  line  upon  a  flat  ef  snow 

Blue  tinted  in  the  failing  afterglow. 

Humped  ponies  'mid  the  drifts  and  clumps  of  sage 

Went  nosing  after  grudging  pasturage 

Where'er  it  chanced  the  blizzard's  whimsic  flaws 

Had  swept  the  slough  grass  bare.     A  flock  of 

squaws 

Chopped  wood  and  chattered  in  the  underbrush, 
Their  ax  strokes  thudding  dully  in  the  hush, 
Their  nasal  voices  rising  shrill  and  clear : 
And,  circled  'neath  a  bluff  that  towered  sheer 
Beside  the  stream,  snug  lodges  wrought  of  hide, 
Smoke-plumed  and  glowing  with  the  fires  inside, 
Made  glad  the  gazers.     Even  as  they  stood, 
Content  to  stare  a  moment,  from  the  wood 
The  clamor  deepened,  and  a  running  shout 
Among  the  lodges  brought  the  dwellers  out, 
Braves,  squaws,  papooses;     and  the  wolf  dogs 

bayed ; 

And  up  the  flat  the  startled  ponies  neighed, 
Pricking  their  ears  to  question  what  befell. 

So  came  Fink's  party  to  the  Musselshell, 
Gaunt,  bearded,  yet  —  how  gloriously  young 
And  then,  what  feasts  of  bison  fleece  and  tongue, 
Of  browned  boudin  and  steaming  humprib  stewl 
What  roaring  nights  of  wassailing  they  knew  — 


38        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Gargantuan  regales  —  when  through  the  town 
The  fiery  liquor  ravined,  melting  down 
The  tribal  hoard  of  beaver !     How  they  made 
Their  merest  gewgaws  mighty  in  the  trade ! 
Aye,   merry  men  they  were!    Nor  could  they 

know 

How  even  then  there  came  that  wraith  of  woe 
Amongst  them;     some  swift-fingered  Fate  that 

span 

The  stuff  of  sorrow,  wove  'twixt  man  and  man 
The  tangling  mesh,  that  friend  might  ruin  friend 
And  each  go  stumbling  to  a  bitter  end  — 
A  threefold  doom  that  now  the  Song  recalls. 


IV 

THE  NET  IS  CAST 
There  was  a  woman. 

What  enchantment  falls 
Upon  that  far  off  revel !     How  the  din 
Of  jangling  voices,  chaffering  to  win 
The  lesser  values,  hushes  at  the  words, 
As  dies  the  dissonance  of  brawling  birds 
Upon  a  calm  before  the  storm  is  hurled ! 
Lo,  down  the  age-long  reaches  of  the  world 
What  rose-breatht  wind  of  ghostly  music  creeps ! 

And  was  she  fair  —  this  woman  ?    Legend  keeps 
No  answer ;  yet  we  know  that  she  was  young, 
If  truly  comes  the  tale  by  many  a  tongue 
That  one  of  Red  Hair's  party  fathered  her. 
What  need  to  know  her  features  as  they  were  ? 
Was  she  not  lovely  as  her  lover's  thought, 
And  beautiful  as  that  wild  love  she  wrought 
Was  fatal  ?    Vessel  of  the  world's  desire, 
Did  she  not  glow  with  that  mysterious  fire 
That  lights  the  hearth  or  burns  the  rooftree  down  ? 
What  face  w^s  hers  who  made  the  timeless  town 
39 


40       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  baleful  torch  forever  ?     Hers  who  wailed 
Upon  the  altar  when  the  four  winds  failed 
At  Aulis  ?    What  the  image  that  looked  up 
On  Iseult  from  the  contemplated  cup 
Of  everlasting  thirst  ?    What  wondrous  face 
Above  the  countless  cradles  of  the  race 
Makes  sudden  heaven  for  the  blinking  eyes  ? 
One  face  in  truth  !    And  once  in  Paradise 
Each  man  shall  stray  unwittingly,  and  see  — 
In  some  unearthly  valley  where  the  Tree 
With  golden  fruitage  perilously  fraught 
Still  stands  —  that  image  of  God's  afterthought. 
Then  shall  the  world  turn  wonderful  and  strange ! 

Who  knows  how  came  that  miracle  of  change 

To  Fink  at  last  ?    For  he  was  not  of  such 

As  tend  to  prize  one  woman  overmuch ; 

And  legend  has  it  that,  from  Pittsburg  down 

To  Baton  Rouge,  in  many  a  river  town 

Some  blowsy  Ariadne  pined  for  Mike. 

"It  is  me  rule  to  love  'em  all  alike." 

He  often  said,  with  slow,  omniscient  wink, 

When  just  the  proper  quantity  of  drink 

Had  made  him  philosophic;   "Glass  or  gourd, 

Shure,  now,  they're  all  wan  liquor  whin  they're 

poured ! 
Aye,  rum  is  rum,  me  b'y !" 


THE  NET  IS  CAST  41 

Alas,  the  tongue ! 

How  glibly  are  its  easy  guesses  flung 
Against  the  knowing  reticence  of  years, 
To  echo  laughter  in  the  time  of  tears, 
Raw  gusts  of  mocking  merriment  that  stings ! 
Some  logic  in  the  seeming  ruck  of  things 
Inscrutably  confutes  us ! 

Now  had  come 

The  time  when  rum  no  longer  should  be  rum, 
But  witchwine  sweet  with  peril.     It  befell 
In  this  wise,  insofar  as  tongue  may  tell 
And  tongues  repeat  the  little  eyes  may  guess 
Of  what  may  happen  in  that  wilderness, 
The  human  heart.     There  dwelt  a  mighty  man 
Among  the  Bloods,  a  leader  of  his  clan, 
Around  whose  life  were  centered  many  lives, 
For  many  sons  had  he  of  many  wives ; 
And  also  he  was  rich  in  pony  herds. 
Wherefore,  they  say,  men  searched  his  lightest 

words 

For  hidden  things,  since  anyone  might  see 
That  none  had  stronger  medicine  than  he 
To  shape  aright  the  stubborn  stuff  of  life. 
Among  the  women  that  he  had  to  wife 
Was  she  who  knew  the  white  man  when  the  band 
Of  Red  Hair  made  such  marvel  in  the  land, 


42       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

She  being  younger  then  and  little  wise. 
But  in  that  she  was  pleasing  to  the  eyes 
And  kept  her  fingers  busy  for  her  child 
And  bore  a  silent  tongue,  the  great  man  smiled 
Upon  the  woman,  called  her  to  his  fire 
And  gave  the  Long  Knife's  girl  a  foster  sire, 
So  that  her  maidenhood  was  never  lean, 
But  like  a  pasture  that  is  ever  green 
Because  it  feels  a  mountain's  sunny  flank. 

Now  in  the  season  when  the  pale  sun  shrank 
Far  southward,  like  another  kind  of  moon, 
And  dawns  were  laggard  and  the  dark  came  soon, 
It  pleased  the  great  man's  whim  to  give  a  feast. 
'Twas  five  days  after  Carpenter  went  east 
With  eight  stout  ponies  and  a  band  of  three 
To  lift  the  cache ;    a  fact  that  well  might  be 
Sly  father  to  the  great  man's  festive  mood  — 
A  wistfully  prospective  gratitude, 
Anticipating  charity ! 

It  chanced 
That  while  the  women   sang  and   young  men 

danced 

About  the  drummers,  and  the  pipe  went  round, 
And  ever  'twixt  the  songs  arose  the  sound 
Of  fat  dog  stewing,  Fink,  with  mournful  eyes 
And  pious  mien,  lamented  the  demise 


THE  NET  IS  CAST  43 

Of  "  pore  owld  Fido,"  till  his  comrades  choked 

With  stifled  laughter ;   soberly  invoked 

The  plopping  stew  ("  Down,  Rover  I     Down,  me 

lad!"); 

Discussed  the  many  wives  the  old  man  had 
In  language  more  expressive  than  polite. 
So,  last  of  all  his  merry  nights,  that  night 
Fink  clowned  it,  little  dreaming  he  was  doomed 
To  wear  that  mask  of  sorrow  he  assumed 
In  comic  mood,  thenceforward  to  the  last. 
For  even  as  he  joked,  the  net  was  cast 
About  him,  and  the  mystic  change  had  come, 
And  he  had  looked  on  rum  that  was  not  rum  — 
The  Long  Knife's  daughter ! 

Stooped  beneath  a  pack 
Of  bundled   twigs,     she   pushed    the  lodge-flap 

back 

And  entered  lightly ;   placed  her  load  of  wood 
Beside  the  fire ;   then  straightened  up  and  stood 
One  moment  there,  a  shapely  girl  and  tall. 
There  wasn't  any  drama  :   that  was  all. 
But  when  she  left,  the  wit  had  died  in  Fink. 
He  seemed  a  man  who  takes  the  one  more  drink 
That  spoils  the  fun,  relaxes  jaw  and  jowl 
And  makes  the  jester,  like  a  sunstruck  owl, 
Stare  solemnly  at  nothing. 


44       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

All  next  day 

He  moped  about  with  scarce  a  word  to  say, 
And  no  one  dared  investigate  his  whim. 
But  when  the  twilight  came,  there  fell  on  him 
A  sentimental,  reminiscent  mood, 
As  though  upon  some  frozen  solitude 
Within  him,  breathed  a  softening  chinook, 
Far  strayed  across  the  alplike  years  that  look 
On  what  one  used  to  be  and  what  one  is. 
And  when  he  raised  that  mellow  voice  of  his 
In  songs  of  lovers  wedded  to  regret, 
'Tis    said    that,    unashamed,    men's    eyes    grew 

wet, 

So  poignantly  old  memories  were  stirred. 
And    much    his    comrades    marvelled     as    they 

heard 

That  ribald  jester  singing  thus  of  love. 
Nor  could  they  solve  the  mystery  thereof, 
Until  at  dawn  they  saw  him  rise  and  take 
A  rifle  of  the  latest  Hawkin  make, 
Ball,  powder,  and  a  bolt  of  scarlet  goods, 
And  hasten  to  the  fringe  of  cottonwoods 
Where  rose  the  great  man's  lodge  smoke.     Then 

they  knew ; 
For  thus  with  gifts  the  Bloods  were  wont   to 

woo 
The  daughter  through  the  sire. 


THE  NET  IS  CAST  45 

The  white  sun  burned 

Midmost  the  morning  steep  when  he  returned 
Without  his  load  and  humming  as  he  went. 
And  hour  by  hour  he  squatted  in  his  tent 
And  stared  upon  the  fire ;   save  now  and  then 
He  stirred  himself  to  lift  the  flap  again 
And  cast  an  anxious  gaze  across  the  snows 
Where  stood  the  chieftain's  lodge.     And  well  did 

those 

Who  saw  him  know  what  sight  he  hoped  to  see ; 
For  'twas  the  custom  that  the  bride-to-be 
Should  carry  food  to  him  she  chose  to  wed. 
Meanwhile,  with  seemly  caution,  be  it  said, 
Fink's  men  enjoyed  a  comedy,  and  laid 
Sly  wagers  on  the  coming  of  the  maid  — 
She  would !     She   wouldn't !     So   the   brief  day 

waned. 

Now  when  the  sun,  a  frosty  specter  maned 
With  corruscating  vapors,  lingered  low 
And  shadows  lay  like  steel  upon  the  snow, 
An  old  squaw,  picking  faggots  in  the  brush, 
Saw  that  which  set  her  shrieking  in  the  hush. 
"They   come!        They   come!"     Then  someone 

shouted  "Crows!" 
The  town  spewed   tumult,   men   with   guns   and 

bows, 


46       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Half  clad  and  roaring ;   shrill  hysteric  wives 
With  sticks  of  smoking  firewood,  axes,  knives ; 
Dogs,     bristle-necked     and     snarling.     So    they 

pressed 

To  meet  a  foe,  as  from  a  stricken  nest 
The  hornet  swarm  boils  over. 

Blinking,  dazed 

With  sudden  light  and  panic  fear,  they  gazed 
About  the  frozen  waste ;    and  then  they  saw 
Eight  laden  ponies  filing  up  the  draw, 
Their  nostrils  steaming,  slack  of  neck  and  slow. 
Behind  them,  stumbling  in  the  broken  snow, 
Three    weary    trappers    trudged,    while  in    the 

lead 

Strode  Carpenter.     A  goodly  sight,  indeed  ! 
Upstanding,  eagle-faced  and  eagle-eyed, 
The  ease  of  latent  power  in  his  stride, 
He  dwarfed  the  panting  pony  that  he  led ; 
And  when  the  level  sunlight  'round  his  head 
Made  glories  in  the  frosted  beard  and  hair, 
Some  Gothic  fighting  god  seemed  walking  there, 
Strayed  from  the  dim  Hercynian  woods  of  old. 

How  little  of  a  story  can  be  told  ! 

Let  him  who  knows  what  happens  in  the  seed 

Before  the  sprout  breaks  sunward,  make  the  deed 


THE  NET  IS  CAST  47 

A  plummet  for  the  dreaming  deeps  that  surged 
Beneath  the  surface  ere  the  deed  emerged 
For  neat  appraisal  by  the  rule  of  thumb  ! 
The  best  of  Clio  is  forever  dumb, 
To  human  ears  at  least.     Nor  shall  the  Song 
Presume  to  guess  and  tell  how  all  night  long, 
While  roared  the  drunken  orgy  and  the  trade, 
Doom  quickened  in  the  fancy  of  a  maid, 
The  daughter  of  the  Long  Knife ;   how  she  saw, 
Serenely  moving  through  a  spacious  awe 
Behind  shut  lids  where  never  came  the  brawl, 
That  shining  one,  magnificently  tall, 
A  day-crowned  mortal  brother  of  the  sun. 
Suffice  it  here  that,  when  the  night  was  done 
And  morning,  like  an  uproar  in  the  east, 
Aroused  the  town  still  heavy  with  'the  feast, 
All  men  might  see  what  whimsic,  fatal  bloom 
A  soil,  dream-plowed  and  seeded  in  the  gloom, 
Had  nourished  unto  blowing  in  the  day. 

'Twas  then  the  girl  appeared  and  took  her  way 
Across  the  snow  with  hesitating  feet. 
She  bore  a  little  pot  of  steaming  meat ; 
And  when  midmost  the  open  space,  she  turned 
And  held  it  up  to  where  the  morning  burned, 
As  one  who  begs  a  blessing  of  the  skies. 
Unconscious  of  the  many  peeping  eyes, 


48       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Erect,  with  wrapt  uplifted  face  she  stood  — 
A  miracle  of  shapely  maidenhood  — 
Before  the  flaming  god.     And  many  heard, 
Or  seemed  to  hear  by  piecing  word  to  word, 
The  prayer  she  muttered  to  the  wintry  sky : 
"O  Sun,  behold  a  maiden !     Pure  am  I ! 
Look  kindly  on  the  little  gift  I  give ; 
For,  save  you  smile  upon  it,  what  can  live? 
Bright  Father,  hear  a  maiden!"     Then,  as  one 
Who  finds  new  courage  for  a  task  begun, 
She  turned  and  hastened  to  the  deed. 

They  say 

There  was  no  dearth  of  gossiping  that  day 
Among  the  lodges.     Shrewish  tongues  there  were 
That  clacked  no  happy  prophecies  of  her. 
And  many  wondered  at  the  chieftain's  whim. 
The  Long  Knife's  girl  had  wrought  a  spell   on 

him; 

Why  else  then  was  he  silent  ?     See  her  shrink 
A  moment  there  before  the  tent  of  Fink, 
As  one  who  feels  a  sudden  sleety  blast ! 
But  look  again !     She  starts,  and  hurries  past ! 
All  round  the  circled  village,  lodges  yawn 
To  see  how  brazen  in  the  stare  of  dawn 
A  petted  girl  may  be.     For  now,  behold ! 
Was  ever  maiden  of  the  Bloods  so  bold  ? 


THE  NET  IS  CAST  49 

She  stops  before  another  tent  and  stoops, 
Her  fingers  feeling  for  the  buckskin  loops 
That  bind  the  rawhide  flap.     'Tis  opened  wide. 
The  slant  white  light  of  morning  falls  inside, 
And  half  the  town  may  witness  at  whose  feet 
She  sets  the  little  pot  of  steaming  meat  — 
'Tis  Carpenter! 


THE  QUARREL 

Perceptibly,  at  length, 

The  days  grew  longer,  and  the  winter's  strength 
Increased  to  fury.     Down  across  the  flat 
The  blizzards  bellowed ;   and  the  people  sat 
Fur-robed  about  the  smoky  fires  that  stung 
Their  eyes  to  streaming,  when  a  freak  gust  flung 
The  sharp  reek  back  with  flaws  of  powdered  snow. 
And  much  the  old  men  talked  of  long  ago, 
Invoking  ghostly  Winters  from  the  Past, 
Till  cold  snap  after  cold  snap  followed  fast, 
And  none  might  pile  his  verbal  snow  so  deep 
But  some  athletic  memory  could  heap 
The  drifts  a  trifle  higher ;   give  the  cold 
A  greater  rigor  in  the  story  told ; 
Put  bellows  to  a  wind  already  high. 
And  ever  greater  reverence  thereby 
The  old  men  won  from  gaping  youths,  who  heard, 
Like  marginalia  to  the  living  word, 
The  howling  of  the  poplars  tempest-bent, 
The  smoke-flap  cracking  sharply  at  the  vent, 
So 


THE  QUARREL  51 

The  lodge  poles  creaking  eerily.     And  O! 

The  happy  chance  of  living  long  ago, 

Of  having  wrinkles  now  and  being  sires 

With  many  tales  to  tell  around  the  fires 

Of  days  when   things  were   bigger!     All   night 

long 

White  hands  came  plucking  at  the  buckskin  thong 
That  bound  the  door-flap,  and  the  writhing  dark 
Was  shrill  with  spirits.     By  the  snuffling  bark 
Of  dogs  men  knew  that  homesick  ghosts  were 

there. 

And  often  in  a  whirl  of  chilling  air 
The  weird  ones  entered,  though  the  flap  still  held, 
Built  up  in  smoke  the  shapes  they  knew  of  eld, 
Grew  thin  and  long  to  vanish  as  they  came. 

Now  had  the  scandal,  like  a  sudden  flame 
Fed  fat  with  grasses,  perished  in  the  storm. 
The  fundamental  need  of  keeping  warm 
Sufficed  the  keenest  gossip  for  a  theme ; 
And  whimsies  faded  like  a  warrior's  dream 
When  early  in  the  dawn  the  foemen  cry. 

The  time  when  calves  are  black  had  blustered 

by- 

A  weary  season  —  since  the  village  saw 
The  chiefs  wife  pitching  for  her  son-in-law 


52        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The  nuptial  lodge  she  fashioned.     Like  a  bow 
That   feels  the   arrow's  head,  the   moon    hung 

low 
That    evening    when    they    gave    the    wedding 

gifts; 

And  men  had  seen  it  glaring  through  the  rifts 
Of  wintry  war  as  up  the  east  it  reeled, 
A  giant  warrior's  battle-bitten  shield  — 
But  now  it  braved  no  more  the  charging  air. 
Meanwhile  the  lodge  of  Carpenter  stood  there 
Beside  the  chieftain's,  huddled  in  the  snows, 
And,  like  a  story  everybody  knows, 
Was  little  heeded  now. 

But  there  was  one 

Who  seldom  noted  what  was  said  or  done 
Among  his  comrades ;   he  would  sit  and  look 
Upon  the  fire,  as  one  who  reads  a  book 
Of  woeful  doings,  ever  on  the  brink 
Of  ultimate  disaster.     It  was  Fink  : 
And  seeing  this,  Talbeau  was  sick  at  heart 
With  dreading  that  his  friends  might  drift  apart 
And  he  be  lost,  because  he  loved  them  both. 
But,  knowing  well  Mike's  temper,  he  was  loath 
To  broach  the  matter.     Also,  knowing  well 
That  silence  broods  upon  the  hottest  hell, 
He  prayed  that  Fink  might  curse. 


THE  QUARREL  53 

So  worried  past 

The  days  of  that  estrangement.     Then  at  last 
One  night  when  round   their  tent  the   blizzard 

roared 

And,  nestled  in  their  robes,  the  others  snored, 
Talbeau  could  bear  the  strain  no  more  and  spoke. 
He  opened  with  a  random  little  joke, 
Like  some  starved  hunter  trying  out  the  range 
Of  precious  game  where  all  the  land  is  strange ; 
And,  as  the  hunter,  missing,  hears  the  grim 
And  spiteful  echo-rifles  mocking  him, 
His  own  unmirthful  laughter  mocked  Talbeau. 
He  could  have  touched  across  the  ember-glow 
Mike's  brooding  face  —  yet  Mike  was  far  away. 
And  O  that  nothing  more  than  distance  lay 
Between  them  —  any  distance  with  an  end ! 
How  tireless  then  in  running  to  his  friend 
A  man  might  be!     For  suddenly  he  knew 
That  Mike  would  have  him  choose  between  the 

two. 

How  could  he  choose  'twixt  Carpenter  and  Fink  ? 
How  idle  were  a  choice  'twixt  food  and  drink 
When,  choosing  neither,  one  were  sooner  dead ! 

Thus  torn  within,  and  hoarse  with  tears  unshed, 
He  strove  again  to  find  his  comrade's  heart : 
"O  damn  it,  Mike,  don't  make  us  drift  apart! 


54       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Don't  do  it,  Mike!    This  ain't  a  killin'  fuss, 

And  hadn't  ought  to  faze  the  three  of  us 

That's  weathered  many  a  rough-and-tumble  fight! 

W'y  don't  you  mind  that  hell-a-poppin'  night 

At  Baton  Rouge  three  years  ago  last  fall  — 

The  time  we  fit  the  whole  damned  dancin'  hall 

And  waded  out  nigh  belly-deep  in  men  ? 

O  who'd  have  said  a  girl  could  part  us,  then? 

And,  Mike,  that  fracas  in  the  Vide  Poche  dive! 

Can  you  forget  it  long  as  you're  alive  ?  — 

A  merry  time !     Us  strollin'  arm-in-arm 

From  drink  to  drink,  not  calculatin'  harm, 

But   curious,  because  St.  Louis  town 

Fair   boiled    with    greasy  mountain  men,  come 

down 

All  brag  and  beaver,  howlin'  for  a  spree! 
And  then  —  you  mind  ?  —  a  feller  jostled  me  — 
'Twas  at  the  bar  —  a  chap  all  bones  and  big. 
Says  he  in  French  :   'You  eater  of  a  pig, 
Make  room  for  mountain  men!'    And  then  says 

you 

In  Irish,  aimin'  where  the  whiskers  grew, 
And  landin'  fair :   'You  eater  of  a  dog, 
Make  room  for  boatmen!'     Like  a  punky  log 
That's  water-soaked,  he  dropped.    What  hap- 
pened then  ? 
A  cyclone  in  a  woods  of  mountain  men  — 


THE  QUARREL  55 

That's    what!      O   Mike,   you    can't    forget    it 

now! 

And  what  in  hell's  a  woman,  anyhow, 
To  memories  like  that?" 

So  spoke  Talbeau, 

And,  pausing,  heard  the  hissing  of  the  snow, 
The  snoring  of  the  sleepers,  and  the  cries 
Of  blizzard-beaten  poplars.     Still  Fink's  eyes 
Upon  the  crumbling  embers  pored  intent. 
Then  momently,  or  so  it  seemed,  there  went 
Across  that  alien  gaze  a  softer  light, 
As  when  bleak  windows  in  a  moony  night 
Flush  briefly  with  a  candle  borne  along. 
And  suddenly  the  weary  hope  grew  strong 
In  him  who  saw  the  glimmer,  and  he  said : 
"O  Mike,  I  see  the  good  old  times  ain't  dead! 
Why  don't  you  fellers  shoot  the  whisky  cup 
The  way  you  used  to  do?" 

Then  Fink  looked  up. 
Twas  bad  the  way  the  muscles  twitched  and 

worked 

About  his  mouth,  and  in  his  eyes  there  lurked 
Some  crouchant  thing.     "To  hell  wid  you!"    he 

cried. 
So  love  and  hate  that  night  slept  side  by  side; 


56       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

And  hate  slept  well,  but  love  lay  broad  awake 
And,  like  a  woman,  for  the  other's  sake 
Eked  out  the  lonely  hours  with  worrying. 

Now  came  a  heartsick  yearning  for  the  spring 
Upon  Talbeau ;   for  surely  this  bad  dream 
Would  vanish  with  the  ice  upon  the  stream, 
Old  times  be  resurrected  with  the  grass ! 
But  would  the  winter  ever,  ever  pass, 
The  howling  of  the  blizzard  ever  cease  ? 
So  often  now  he  dreamed  of  hearing  geese 
Remotely  honking  in  the  rain-washed  blue ; 
And  ever  when  the  blur  of  dawn  broke  through 
The  scudding  rack,  he  raised  the  flap  to  see, 
By  sighting  through  a  certain  forked  tree, 
How  much  the  sun  made  northward. 

Then,  one  day, 

The  curtain  of  the  storm  began  to  fray ; 
The  poplars'  howling  softened  to  a  croon ; 
The  sun  set  clear,  and  dusk  revealed  the  moon  — 
A  thin-blown  bubble  in  a  crystal  bowl. 
All  night,  as  'twere  the  frozen  prairie's  soul 
That  voiced  a  hopeless  longing  for  the  spring, 
The  wolves    assailed    with   mournful    question- 
ing 
The  starry  deeps  of  that  tremendous  hush. 


THE  QUARREL  57 

Dawn  wore  the  mask  of  May  —  a  rosy  flush. 
It  seemed  the  magic  of  a  single  bird 
Might  prove  the  seeing  of  the  eye  absurd 
And  make  the  heaped-up  winter  billow  green. 
On  second  thought,  one  knew  the  air  was  keen  — 
A  whetted  edge  in  gauze.     The  village  fires 
Serenely  builded  tenuous  gray  spires 
That  vanished  in  the  still  blue  deeps  of  awe. 
All  prophets  were  agreed  upon  a  thaw. 
And  when  the  morning  stood  a  spearlength  high, 
There  grew  along  the  western  rim  of  sky 
A  bank  of  cloud  that  had  a  rainy  look. 
It  mounted  slowly.    Then  the  warm  chinook 
Began  to  breathe  a  melancholy  drowse 
And  sob  among  the  naked  poplar  boughs, 
As  though  the  prairie  dreamed  a  dream  of  June 
And  knew  it  for  a  dream.     All  afternoon 
The  gale  increased.    The  sun  went  down  blood- 
red; 

The  young  moon,  perilously  fragile,  fled 
To  early  setting.    And  the  long  night  roared. 

Tempestuously  broke  the  day  and  poured 
An  intermittent  glory  through  the  rifts 
Amid  the  driven  fog.    The  sodden  drifts 
Already  grooved  and  withered  in  the  blast ; 
And  when  the  flying  noon  stared  down  aghast, 


58       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The    bluffs    behind    the    village    boomed    with 

flood. 

What  magic  in  that  sound  to  stir  the  blood 
Of  winter-weary  men !    For  now  the  spring 
No  longer  seemed  a  visionary  thing, 
But  that  which  any  morning  might  bestow. 
And  most  of  all  that  magic  moved  Talbeau ; 
For,  scrutinizing  Fink,  he  thought  he  saw 
Some  reflex  of  that  February  thaw  — 
A  whit  less  curling  of  the  upper  lip. 
O  could  it  be  returning  comradeship, 
That  April  not  beholden  to  the  moon 
Nor  chatteled  to  the  sun  ? 

That  afternoon 

They  played  at  euchre.     Even  Fink  sat  in ; 
And  though  he  showed  no  eagerness  to  win, 
Forgot  the  trumps  and  played  his  bowers  wild, 
There  were  not  lacking  moments  when  he  smiled, 
A  hesitating  smile  'twixt  wan  and  grim. 
It  seemed  his  stubborn  mood  embarrassed  him 
Because  regret  now  troubled  it  with  shame. 

The   great   wind    died    at   midnight.     Morning 

came, 

Serene  and  almost  indolently  warm  — 
As  when  an  early  April  thunder  storm 


THE  QUARREL  59 

Has  cleansed  the  night  and  vanished  with  the 

gloom ; 

When  one  can  feel  the  imminence  of  bloom 
As  'twere  a  spirit  in  the  orchard  trees ; 
When,  credulous  of  blossom,  come  the  bees 
To  grumble  'round  the  seepages  of  sap. 
So  mused  Talbeau  while,  pushing  back  the  flap, 
Instinctively  he  listened  for  a  bird 
To  fill  the  hush.     Then  presently  he  heard  — 
And  'twas  the  only  sound  in  all  the  world  — 
The  trickle  of  the  melting  snow  that  purled 
And  tinkled  in  the  bluffs  above  the  town. 
The  sight  of  ragged  Winter  patched  with  brown, 
The  golden  peace  and,  palpitant  therein, 
That  water  note,  spun  silverly  and  thin, 
Begot  a  wild  conviction  in  the  man  : 
The  wounded  Winter  weakened ;  now  began 
The  reconciliation !    Hate  would  go 
And,  even  as  the  water  from  the  snow, 
Old  comradeship  come  laughing  back  again ! 

All  morning  long  he  pondered,  while  the  men 
Played    seven-up.      And    scarce    a    trick    was 

played 

But  someone  sang  a  snatch  of  song  or  made 
A  merry  jest.     And  when  the  game  was  balked 
By  one  who  quite  forgot  his  hand,  and  talked 


60       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Of  things  in  old  St.  Louis,  none  demurred. 
And  thus,  by  noon,  it  seemed  the  lightest  word 
Of  careless  salutation  would  avail 
To  give  a  happy  ending  to  the  tale 
Of  clouded  friendship.     So  he  'rose  and  went, 
By  studied  indirection,  to  the  tent 
Of  Carpenter,  as  one  who  takes  the  air. 
And,  as  he  raised  the  flap  and  entered  there, 
A  sudden  gale  of  laughter  from  the  men 
Blew  after  him.     What  music  in  it  then  ! 
What  mockery,  when  memory  should  raise 
So  often  in  the  coming  nights  and  days 
The  ruthless  echo  of  it ! 

Click  on  click 

Amid  the  whirlwind  finish  of  a  trick 
The  cards  fell  fast,  while  King  and  Queen  and  Ace, 
With  meaner  trumps  for  hounds,  pursued  the  chase 
Of  wily  Knave  and  lurking  Deuce  and  Ten ; 
When  suddenly  the  game-enchanted  men 
Were  conscious  of  a  shadow  in  the  place, 
And  glancing  up  they  saw  the  smiling  face 
Of  Carpenter,  thrust  in  above  Talbeau's. 
"How  goes  it,  Boys  ?"   said  he;   and  gaily  those 
Returned  the  greeting.     "Howdy,  Mike!"     he 

said; 
And  with  a  sullen  hanging  of  the  head 


THE  QUARREL  6l 

Fink  mumbled   "Howdy!"      Gruff—  but  what 

of  that  ? 

One  can  not  doff  displeasure  like  a  hat  — 
'Twould  dwindle  snow-like. 

Nothing  else  would  do 
But  Carpenter  should  play.     Now  Fink  played 

too; 

And,  having  brought  his  cherished  ones  together, 
Talbeau  surrendered  to  the  languid  weather 
And,  dreamily  contented,  watched  the  sport. 
All  afternoon  the  pictured  royal  court 
Pursued  its  quarry  in  the  mimic  hunt ; 
And  Carpenter,  now  gayer  than  his  wont, 
Lost  much ;  while  Fink,  with  scarce  a  word  to  say, 
His  whole  attention  fixed  upon  the  play, 
Won  often.     So  it  happened,  when  the  sun 
Was  near  to  setting,  that  the  day  seemed  won 
For  friendliness,  however  stood  the  game. 
But  even  then  that  Unseen  Player  came 
Who  stacks  the  thuffled  deck  of  circumstance 
And,  playing  wild  the  Joker  men  call  Chance, 
Defeats  the  Aces  of  our  certainty. 

The  cards  were  dealt  and  Carpenter  bid  three. 
The  next  man  passed  the  bid,  and  so  the  next. 
Than  Fink,  a  trifle  hesitant  and  vexed, 


62        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Bid  four  on  spades.     And  there  was  one  who  said 
In  laughing  banter:   "Mike,  I'll  bet  my  head 
As  how  them  spades  of  your'n  '11  dig  a  hole !" 
And  in  some  subtle  meaning  of  the  soul  j 
The  wag  was  more  a  prophet  than  he  knew. 

Fink  held  the  Ace  and  Deuce,  and  that  made  two : 
His    black     King    scored    another    point    with 

Knave. 

But  Carpenter,  to  whom  that  Weird  One  gave 
A  band  of  lesser  trumps  to  guard  his  Ten, 
Lay  low  until  the  Queen  had  passed,  and  then 
Swept  in  a  last  fat  trick  for  Game,  and  scored. 
And  now  the  players  slapped  their  knees  and 

roared : 
"You're  set!    You're  in  the  hole!    He  set  you, 

Mike!" 

Then  suddenly  they  saw  Fink  crouch  to  strike ; 
And  ere  they  comprehended  what  they  saw, 
There  came  a  thud  of  knuckles  on  a  jaw 
And  Carpenter  rolled  over  on  the  ground. 
One  moment  in  a  breathless  lapse  of  sound 
The  stricken  man  strove  groggily  to  'rise, 
The  emptiness  of  wonder  in  his  eyes 
Turned  dreamily  with  seeming  unconcern 
Upon  Mike's  face,  where  now  began  to  burn 


THE  QUARREL  63 

The  livid  murder-lust.     'Twixt  breath  and  breath 

The  hush  and  immobility  of  death 

Made  there  a  timeless  picture.     Then  a  yell, 

As  of  a  wild  beast  charging,  broke  the  spell. 

Fink  sprang  to  crush,  but  midway  met  Talbeau 

Who  threw  him  as  a  collie  dog  may  throw 

A  raging  bull.     But  Mike  was  up  again, 

And  wielding  thrice  the  might  of  common  men, 

He  gripped  the  little  man  by  nape  and  thigh 

And  lightly  lifted  him  and  swung  him  high 

And  flung  him  ;   and  the  smitten  tent  went  down. 

Then  'rose  a  roar  that  roused  the  teeming  town, 

And  presently  a  shouting  rabble  surged 

About  the  wreck,  whence  tumblingly  emerged 

A  knot  of  men  who  grappled  Fink  and  clung. 

Prodigiously  he  rose  beneath  them,  flung 

His  smashing  arms,  man-laden,  forth  and  back; 

But  stubbornly  they  gripped  him,  like  a  pack 

That  takes  uncowed  the  maulings  of  a  bear. 

"Let  Carpenter  get  up!"     they  cried.     "Fight 

fair! 
Fight  fair!     Fight  fail !" 

Quite  leisurely  the  while 
The  stricken  man  arose,  a  sleepy  smile 
About  his  quiet  eyes.     Indeed,  he  seemed 
As  one  but  lately  wakened,  who  has  dreamed 


64       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  pleasing  dream.       But  when  he  stroked  his 

beard 

And  gazed  upon  his  fingers,  warmly  smeared 
With  crimson  from  the  trickle  at  his  jaw, 
His  eyes  went  eagle-keen  with  what  they  saw. 
The  stupor  passed.     He  hastily  untied 
His  buckskin  shirt  and,  casting  it  aside, 
Stood  naked  to.  the  hips.    The  tumult  ceased 
As,  panting  hard,  the  voyageurs  released 
Their  struggling  charge  and,  ducking  to  a  swing 
Of  those  freed    arms,  sought    safety,  scamper- 
ing. 

Fink  also  stripped  his  shirt ;   and  as  the  man 
Stood  thus  revealed,  a  buzz  of  wonder  ran 
Amid  the  jostling  rabble.     Few  there  were 
Who  in  that  moment  envied  Carpenter, 
Serenely  poised  and  waiting  placid  browed : 
For  shall  a  lonely  cedar  brave  a  cloud 
Bulged  big  and  shapen  to  the  cyclone's  whirl  ? 
Lo,  even  as  the  body  of  a  girl, 
The  body  of  the  blond  was  smooth  and  white ; 
But  vaguely,  as  one  guesses  at"the  might 
Of  silent  waters  running  swift  and  deep, 
One  guessed  what  stores  of  power  lay  asleep 
Beneath  the  long  fleet  lines  of  trunk  and  limb. 
Thus  God  had  made  experiment  with  him ; 


THE  QUARREL  65 

And,  groping  for  the  old  Adamic  dream, 

Had  found  his  patterns  in  the  tree  and  stream, 

As  Fink's  in  whirling  air  and  hungry  flame. 

Now  momently  the  picture  there  became 

A  blur  of  speed.     Mike  rushed.     The  tiptoe  town 

Craned  eagerly  to  see  a  man  go  down 

Before  that  human  thunder  gust.     But  lo! 

As  bends  a  sapling  when  the  great  winds  blow, 

The  other  squatted,  deftly  swayed  aside, 

And  over  him  the  slashing  blows  went  wide. 

Fink  sprawled.      But  hardly  had   a    spreading 

roar 

O'errun  the  town,  when  silence  as  before 
Possessed  the  scene ;   for  Mike  flashed  back  again 
With  flame-like  speed,  and  suddenly  the  men 
Clenched,  leaning  neck  to  neck. 

Without  a  word, 

Like  horn-locked  bulls  that  strive  before  the  herd, 
They  balanced  might  with  might;     till  Mike's 

hands  whipped 

Beneath  the  other's  arm-pits,  met  and  gripped 
Across  the  broad  white  shoulders.     Then  began 
The  whole  prodigious  engine  of  the  man 
To  bulge  and  roll  and  darken  with  the  strain. 
Like  rivulets  fed  suddenly  with  rain, 


66       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The  tall  one's  thews  rose  ropily  and  flowed 
Converging  might  against  the  growing  load 
Of  those  tremendous  arms  that  strove  to  crush. 

Their  labored  breathing  whistled  in  the  hush. 
One  saw  the  blond  man's  face  go  bluish  red, 
As  deeper,  deeper  sank  Fink's  shaggy  head 
Amid  his  heaped-up  shoulder  brawn.     One  knew 
That  very  soon  the  taller  of  the  two 
Must  yield  and  take  that  terrible  embrace. 

A  tense  hypnotic  quiet  filled  the  place. 
The  men  were  like  two  wrestlers  in  a  dream 
That  holds  an  endless  moment ;   till  a  scream 
Fell  stab-like  on  the  hush.     One  saw  Talbeau, 
Jaws  set,  hands  clenched,  eyes  wild,  and  bending 

low, 

As  though  he  too  were  struggling,  slowly  bowed 
Beneath  Fink's  might.     And  then  — 

What  ailed  the  crowd  ? 
Swept  over  by  a  flurry  of  surprise, 
They  swayed  and  jostled,  shouting  battle-cries 
And  quips  and  jeers  of  savage  merriment. 
One  moment  they  had  seen  the  tall  man  bent, 
About  to  break :   then,  falling  back  a-haunch, 
His  feet  had  plunged  against  the  other's  paunch 
And  sent  Fink  somersaulting. 


THE  QUARREL  67 

Once  again 

A  silence  fell  as,  leaping  up,  the  men 
Were  mingled  briefly  in  a  storm  of  blows. 
Now,  tripping  like  a  dancer  on  his  toes, 
The  blond  man  sparred  ;  while,  like  a  baited  bear, 
Half  blinded  with  the  lust  to  crush  and  tear, 
Fink  strove  to  clutch  that  something  lithe   and 

sleek 

That  stung  and  fled  and  stung.     Upon  his  cheek 
A  flying  shadow  laid  a  vivid  bruise; 
Another  —  and  his  brow  began  to  ooze 
Slow  drops  that  spattered  on  his  bearded  jaw. 
Again  that  shadow  passed  —  his  mouth  went  raw, 
And  like  a  gunshot  wound  it  gaped  and  bled. 

Fink  roared  with  rage  and  plunged  with  lowered 

head 

Upon  this  thing  that  tortured,  hurled  it  back 
Amid  the  crowd.     One  heard  a  thud  and  smack 
Of  rapid  blows  on  bone  and  flesh  —  and  then 
One  saw  the  tall  man  stagger  cleaj  again 
With  gushing  nostrils  and  a  bloody  grin, 
And  down  his  front  the  whiteness  of  the  skin 
Was  striped  with  flowing  crimson  to  the  waist. 
Unsteadily  he  wheeled  about  and  faced 
The  headlong  hate  of  his  antagonist. 
Now  toe  to  toe  and  fist  to  flying  fist, 


68        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

They  played  at  give  and  take ;  and  all  the  while 
The  blond  man  smiled  that  riddle  of  a  smile, 
As  one  who  meditates  upon  a  jest. 

Yet  surely  he  was  losing !     Backward  pressed, 

He  strove  in  vain  to  check  his  raging  foe. 

Fink  lunged   and   straightened   to    a    shoulder 

blow 

With  force  enough  to  knock  a  bison  down. 
The    other    dodged    it,    squatting.      Then   the 

town 

Discovered  what  a  smile  might  signify. 
For,  even  as  the  futile  blow  went  by, 
One  saw  the  lithe  white  form  shoot  up  close  in, 
A  hooked  white  arm  jab  upward  to  the  chin  — 
Once  —  twice  —  and  yet   again.     With   eyes   a- 

stare, 

His  hands  aloft  and  clutching  at  the  air, 
Fink  tottered  backward,  limply  lurched  and  fell. 

Then   came  to   pass   what  stilled  the   rabble's 

yell, 

So  strange  it  was.      And  'round  the  fires  that 

night 

The  wisest  warriors,  talking  of  the  fight, 
Could  not  explain  what  happened  at  the  end. 
No  friend,  they  said,  makes  war  upon  a  friend ; 


THE  QUARREL  69 

Nor  does  a  foe  have  pity  on  a  foe  : 

And  yet  the  tall  white  chief  had  bathed  with 

snow 

The  bloody  mouth  and  battered  cheek  and  brow 
Of  him  who  fell ! 

Queer  people,  anyhow, 

The  Long  Knives  were  —  and  hard  to  under- 
stand 1 


VI 

THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP 

Bull-roaring  March  had  swept  across  the  land, 
And  now  the  evangelic  goose  and  crane, 
Forerunners  of  the  messianic  Rain, 
Went  crying  through  the  wilderness  aloft. 
Fog  hid  the  sun,  and  yet  the  snow  grew  soft. 
The  monochrome  of  sky  and  poplar  bough, 
Drab  tracery  on  drab,  was  stippled  now 
With  swelling  buds ;   and  slushy  water  ran 
Upon  the  ice-bound  river  that  began 
To  stir  and  groan  as  one  about  to  wake. 

Now,  while  they  waited  for  the  ice  to  break, 
The     trappers     fashioned      bull-boats  —  willow 

wrought 

To  bowl-like  frames,  and  over  these  drawn  taut 
Green  bison  hides  with  bison  sinew  sewn. 
And  much  they  talked  about  the  Yellowstone : 
How  fared  their  comrades  yonder  since  the  fall  ? 
And  would  they  marvel  at  the  goodly  haul 
Of  beaver  pelts  these  crazy  craft  should  bring  ? 
And  what  of  Ashley  starting  north  that  spring 
70 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          71 

With  yet  another  hundred  ?     Did  his  prows 
Already  nose  the  flood  ?  —  Ah,  cherry  boughs 
About  St.  Louis  now  were  loud  with  bees 
And  white  with  bloom ;   and  wading  to  the  knees, 
The  cattle  browsed  along  the  fresh  green  sloughs ! 
Yes,  even  now  the  leaning  cordelle  crews 
With  word  from  home  (so  far  away,  alas !) 
Led  north  the  marching  armies  of  the  grass, 
As  'twere  the  heart  of  Summertime  they  towed  ! 

So  while  they  shaped  the  willow  frames  and  sewed 
The  bison  hides,  the  trappers'  hearts  were  light. 
They  talked  no  longer  now  about  the  fight. 
That  story,  shaped  and  fitted  part  by  part, 
Unwittingly  was  rounded  into  art, 
And,  being  art,  already  it  was  old. 
When  this  bleak  time  should  seem  the  age  of  gold, 
These  men,  grown  gray  and  garrulous,  might  tell 
Of  wondrous  doings  on  the  Musselshell  — 
How  Carpenter,  the  mighty,  fought,  and  how 
Great  Fink  went  down.     But  spring  was  coming 

now, 
And  who's  for  backward  looking  in  the  spring  ? 

Yet  one  might  see  that  Mike  still  felt  the  sting 
Of  that  defeat ;  for  often  he  would  brood, 
Himself  the  center  of  a  solitude 


72        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Wherein  the  friendly  chatter  of  the  band 

Was  like  a  wind  that  makes  a  lonely  land 

Seem  lonelier.     And  much  it  grieved  Talbeau 

To  see  a  haughty  comrade  humbled  so ; 

And,  even  more,  he  feared  what  wounded  pride 

Might   bring  to  pass,  before  their  boats  could 

ride 

The  dawnward  reaches  of  the  April  floods 
And  leave  behind  the  village  of  the  Bloods ; 
For  now  it  seemed  a  curse  was  on  the  place. 
Talbeau  was  like  a  man  who  views  a  race 
With  all  to  lose :  so  slowly  crept  the  spring, 
So  surely  crawled  some  formless  fatal  thing, 
He  knew  not  what  it  was.     But  should  it  win, 
Life  could  not  be  again  as  it  had  been 
And  spring  would  scarcely  matter  any  more. 
The  daybreak  often  found  him  at  the  shore, 
A  ghostly  figure  in  the  muggy  light, 
Intent  to  see  what  progress  over  night 
The  shackled  river  made  against  the  chain. 

And  then  at  last,  one  night,  a  dream  of  rain 
Came  vividly  upon  him.     How  it  poured ! 
A  witch's  garden  was  the  murk  that  roared 
With     bursting     purple     bloom.     'Twas     April 

weather, 
And  he  and  Mike  and  Bill  were  boys  together 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          73 

Beneath  the  sounding  shingle  roof  at  home. 
He  smelled  the  odor  of  the  drinking  loam 
Still  rolling  mellow  from  the  recent  share; 
And  he  could  feel  the  meadow  greening  there 
Beyond  the  apple  orchard.     Then  he  'woke 
And  raised  the  flap.     A  wraith  of  thunder-smoke 
Was  trailing  off  along  the  prairie's  rim. 
Half  dreaming  yet,  the  landscape  puzzled  him. 
What  made  the  orchard  seem  so  tall  and  lean  ? 
And  surely  yonder  meadow  had  been  green 
A  moment  since  !     What  made  it  tawny  now  ? 
And  yonder  where  the  billows  of  the  plow 
Should  glisten  fat  and  sleek  —  ? 

The  drowsy  spell 

Dropped  off  and  left  him  on  the  Musselshell 
Beneath  the  old  familiar  load  of  care. 
He  looked  aloft.     The  stars  had  faded  there. 
The  sky  was  cloudless.     No,  one  lonely  fleece 
Serenely  floated  in  the  spacious  peace 
And  from  the  distance  caught  prophetic  light. 
In  truth  he  had  heard  thunder  in  the  night 
And  dashing  rain ;  for  all  the  land  was  soaked, 
And    where   the   withered    drifts    had    lingered, 

smoked 

The  naked  soil.     But  since  the  storm  was  gone, 
How  strange  that  still  low  thunder  mumbled  on  — 


74        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

An  unresolving  cadence  marred  at  whiles 

By  dull  explosions  !     Now  for  miles  and  miles 

Along  the  vale  he  saw  a  trail  of  steam 

That  marked  the  many  windings  of  the  stream, 

As  though  the  river  simmered.     Then  he  knew. 

It  was  the  sound  of  April  breaking  through ! 

The  resurrection  thunder  had  begun ! 

The  ice  was  going  out,  and  spring  had  won 

The  creeping  race  with  dread  ! 

His  ringing  cheers 

Brought  out  the  blinking  village  by  the  ears 
To  share  the  news;    and  though  they  could  not 

know 

What  ecstasy  of  triumph  moved  Talbeau, 
Yet  lodge  on  lodge  took  up  the  joyous  cry 
That  set  the  dogs  intoning  to  the  sky, 
The  drenched  cayuses  shrilly  nickering. 
So  man  and  beast  proclaimed  the  risen  Spring 
Upon  the  Musselshell. 

And  all  day  long 

The  warring  River  sang  its  ocean  song. 
And  all  that  night  the  spirits  of  the  rain 
Made  battle  music  with  a  shattered  chain 
And  raged  upon  the  foe.     And  did  one  gaze 
Upon  that  struggle  through  the  starry  haze, 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          75 

One  saw  enormous  bodies  heaved  and  tossed, 
Where  stubbornly  the  Yotuns  of  the  Frost 
With  shoulder  set  to  shoulder  strove  to  stem 
The  wild  invasion  rolling  over  them. 
Nor  in  the  morning  was  the  struggle  done. 
Serenely  all  that  day  the  doughty  Sun, 
A  banished  king  returning  to  his  right, 
Beheld  his  legions  pouring  to  the  fight, 
Exhaustless ;   and  his  cavalries  that  rode  — 
With  hoofs  that  rumbled  and  with  manes  that 

flowed 

White  in  the  war  gust  —  crashing  on  the  foe. 
And  all  that  night  the  din  of  overthrow 
Arose  to  heaven  from  the  stricken  field ; 
A  sound  as  of  the  shock  of  spear  and  shield, 
Of  wheels  that  trundled  and  the  feet  of  hordes, 
Of  shrieking  horses  mad  among  the  swords, 
Hurrahing  of  attackers  and  attacked, 
And  sounds  as  of  a  city  that  is  sacked 
When  lust  for  loot  runs  roaring  through  the  night. 
Dawn  looked  upon  no  battle,  but  a  flight. 
And  when  the  next  day  broke,  the  spring  flood 

flowed 
Like  some  great  host  that  takes  the  homeward 

road 

With  many  spoils  —  a  glad  triumphal  march, 
Of  which  the  turquoise  heaven  was  the  arch. 


76       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Now  comes  a  morning  when  the  tents  are  down 

And  packed  for  travel ;  and  the  whole  Blood  town 

Is  out  along  the  waterfront  to  see 

The  trappers  going.     Dancing  as  with  glee, 

Six  laden  bull-boats  feel  the  April  tide 

And  sweep  away.     Along  the  riverside 

The  straggling,  shouting  rabble  keeps  abreast 

A  little  while ;  but,  longer  than  the  rest, 

A  weeping  runner  races  with  the  swirl 

And  loses  slowly.     'Tis  the  Long  Knife's  girl, 

Whom  love  perhaps  already  makes  aware 

How  flows  unseen  a  greater  river  there  — 

The  never-to-be-overtaken  days. 

And  now  she  pauses  at  the  bend  to  gaze 

Upon  the  black  boats  dwindling  down  the  long 

Dawn-gilded  reach.     A  merry  trapper's  song 

Comes  liltingly  to  mock  her,  and  a  hand 

Waves  back  farewell.   Now  'round  a  point  of  land 

The  bull-boats  disappear ;   and  that  is  all  — 

Save  only  that  long  waiting  for  the  fall 

When  he  would  come  again. 

All  day  they  swirled 

Northeastwardly.     The  undulating  world 
Flowed  by  them  —  wooded  headland,  greening 

vale 
And  naked  hill  —  as  in  a  fairy  tale 


THE   SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          77 

Remembered  in  a  dream.     And  when  the  flare 
Of  sunset  died  behind  them,  and  the  air 
Went  weird  and  deepened  to  a  purple  gloom, 
They  saw  the  white  Enchanted  Castles  loom 
Above  them,  slowly  pass  and  drift  a-rear, 
Dissolving  in  the  starry  crystal  sphere 
'Mid  which  they  seemed  suspended. 

Late  to  camp, 

They  launched  while  yet  the  crawling  valley  damp 
Made  islands  of  the  distant  hills  and  hid 
The  moaning  flood.     The  Half  Way  Pyramid 
That  noon  stared  in  upon  them  from  the  south. 
'Twas  starlight  when  they  camped  at  Hell  Creek's 

mouth, 

Among  those  hills  where  evermore  in  vain 
The  Spring  comes  wooing,  and  the  April  rain 
Is  tears  upon  a  tomb.     And  once  again 
The  dead  land  echoed  to  the  songs  of  men 
Bound  dayward  when  the  dawn  was  but  a  streak. 
Halfway  to  noon  they  sighted  Big  Dry  Creek, 
Not  choked  with  grave  dust  now,  but  carolling 
The  universal  music  of  the  spring. 
Then  when  the  day  was  midway  down  the  sky, 
They    reached   the    Milk.     And   howsoe'er  the 

eye 

Might  sweep  that  valley  with  a  far-flung  gaze, 
It  found  no  spot  uncovered  with  a  maze 


78       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Of  bison  moving  lazily  at  browse  — 
Scarce  wilder  than  a  herd  of  dairy  cows 
That  know  their  herdsman. 

Now  the  whole  band  willed 

To  tarry.     So  they  beached  their  boats  and  killed 
Three  fading  heifers;   sliced  the  juicy  rumps 
For  broiling  over  embers ;   set  the  humps 
And  loins  to  roast  on  willow  spits,  and  threw 
The  hearts  and  livers  in  a  pot  to  stew 
Against  the  time  of  dulling  appetites.' 
And  when  the  stream  ran  opalescent  lights 
And  in  a  scarlet  glow  the  new  moon  set, 
The  feast  began.     And  some  were  eating  yet, 
And  some  again  in  intervals  of  sleep, 
When  upside  down  above  the  polar  steep 
The  Dipper  hung.     And  many  tales  were  told 
And  there  was  hearty  laughter  as  of  old, 
With  Fink's  guffaw  to  swell  it  now  and  then. 
It  seemed  old  times  were  coming  back  again ; 
That  truly  they  had  launched  upon  a  trip 
Whereof  the  shining  goal  was  comradeship : 
And  tears  were  in  the  laughter  of  Talbeau, 
So  glad  was  he.     For  how  may  mortals  know 
Their  gladness,  save  they  sense  it  by  the  fear 
That  whispers  how  the  very  thing  held  dear 
May  pass  away  ? 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          79 

The  smoky  dawn  was  lit, 
And,  suddenly  become  aware  of  it, 
A  flock  of  blue  cranes,  dozing  on  the  sand, 
With  startled  cries  awoke  the  sprawling  band 
And  took  the  misty  air  with  moaning  wings. 
Disgruntled  with  the  chill  drab  scheme  of  things, 
Still  half  asleep  and  heavy  with  the  feast, 
The  trappers  launched  their  boats.     Rut  when 

the  east 

Burned  rosily,  therefrom  a  raw  wind  blew, 
And  ever  with  the  growing  day  it  grew 
Until  the  stream  rose  choppily  and  drove 
The  fleet  ashore.     Camped  snugly  in  a  grove 
Of  cottonwoods,  they  slept.     And  when  the  gale, 
Together  with  the  light,  began  to  fail, 
They  'rose  and  ate  and  set  a-drift  again. 

It  seemed  the  solid  world  that  mothers  men 
With  twilight  and  the  falling  moon  had  passed, 
And  there  was  nothing  but  a  hollow  vast, 
By  time-outlasting  stars  remotely  lit, 
And  they  who  at  the  central  point  of  it 
Hung  motionless ;  while,  rather  sensed  than  seen, 
The  phantoms  of  a  world  that  had  been  green 
Stole    by    in    silence  —  shapes    that   once   were 

trees, 
Black  wraiths  of  bushes,  airy  traceries 


80       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Remembering  the  hills.     Then  sleep  made  swift 
The  swinging  of  the  Dipper  and  the  lift 
Of  stars  that  dwell  upon  the  day's  frontier ; 
Until  at  length  the  wheeling  hollow  sphere 
Began  to  fill.     And  just  at  morningshine 
They  landed  at  the  Little  Porcupine. 

Again  they  slept  and,  putting  off  at  night, 
They  passed  the  Elk  Horn  Prairie  on  the  right 
Halfway  to  dawn  and  Wolf  Creek.     One  night 

more 

Had  vanished  when  they  slept  upon  the  shore 
Beside   the    Poplar's    mouth.     And    three    had 

fled 

When,  black  against  the  early  morning  red, 
The  Fort  that  Henry  builded  heard  their  calls, 
And  sentries'  rifles  spurting  from  the  walls 
Spilled  drawling  echoes.     Then  the  gates  swung 

wide 

And  shouting  trappers  thronged  the  riverside 
To  welcome  back  the  homing  voyageurs. 

That  day  was  spent  in  sorting  out  the  furs, 
With  eager  talk  of  how  the  winter  went ; 
And  with  the  growing  night  grew  merriment. 
The  hump  and  haunches  of  a  bison  cow 
Hung  roasting  at  the  heaped-up  embers  now 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          81 

On   Henry's   hearth.     The   backlog  whined  and 

popped 

And,  sitting  squat  or  lounging  elbow-propped, 
Shrewd  traders  in  the  merchandise  of  tales 
Held  traffic,  grandly  careless  how  the  scales 
Tiptilted  with  a  slight  excessive  weight. 
And  when  the  roast  was  finished,  how  they  ate ! 
And  there  was  that  which  set  them  singing  too 
Against  the  deep  bass  music  of  the  flue, 
While  catgut  screamed  ecstatic  in  the  lead, 
Encouraging  the  voices  used  and  keyed 
To  vast  and  windy  spaces. 

Later  came 

A  gentler  mood  when,  staring  at  the  flame, 
Men  ventured  reminiscences  and  spoke 
About  Kentucky  people  or  the  folk 
Back  yonder  in  Virginia  or  the  ways 
They  knew  in  old  St.  Louis ;  till  the  blaze 
Fell  blue  upon  the  hearth,  and  in  the  gloom 
And  melancholy  stillness  of  the  room 
They  heard  the  wind  of  midnight  wail  outside. 
Then  there  was  one  who  poked  the  logs  and  cried  : 
"Is  this  a  weeping  drunk  ?    I  swear  I'm  like 
To  tear  my  hair !    Sing  something  lively,  Mike !" 
And  Fink  said  nought ;  but  after  poring  long 
Upon  the  logs,  began  an  Irish  song  — 


82        THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  gently  grieving  thing  like  April  rain, 

That  while  it  wakes  old  memories  of  pain, 

Wakes  also  odors  of  the  violet. 

A  broken  heart,  it  seemed,  could  ne'er  forget 

The  eyes  of  Nora,  dead  upon  the  hill. 

And  when  he  ceased  the  men  sat  very  still, 

As  hearing  yet  the  low  caressing  note 

Of  some  lost  angel  mourning  in  his  throat. 

And  afterwhile  Mike  spoke :   "  Shure,  now,"  said 

he, 

"'Tis  in  a  woman's  eyes  shtrong  liquors  be; 
And  if  ye  drink  av  thim  —  and  if  ye  drink  — " 
For  just  a  moment  in  the  face  of  Fink 
Talbeau  beheld  that  angel  yearning  through ; 
And  wondering  if  Carpenter  saw  too, 
He  looked,  and  lo !  the  guileless  fellow  —  grinned ! 

As  dreaming  water,  stricken  by  a  wind, 
Gives  up  the  imaged  heaven  that  it  knows, 
So  Fink's  face  lost  the  angel.     He  arose 
And  left  the  place  without  a  word  to  say. 

The  morrow  was  a  perfect  April  day ; 

Nor  might  one  guess  —  so  friendly  was  the  sun, 

So  kind  the  air  —  what  thread   at  length  was 

spun, 

What  shears  were  opened  now  to  sever  it. 
No  sullen  mood  was  Mike's.     His  biting  wit 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          83 

Made  gay  the  trappers  busy  with  the  fur ; 
Though  more  and  ever  more  on  Carpenter 
His  sallies  fell,  with  ever  keener  whet. 
And  Carpenter,  unskilled  in  banter,  met 
The  sharper  sally  with  the  broader  grin. 
But,  by  and  by,  Mike  made  a  jest,  wherein 
Some  wanton  innuendo  lurked  and  leered, 
About  the  Long  Knife's  girl.     The  place  went 

weird 

With  sudden  silence  as  the  tall  man  strode 
Across  the  room,  nor  lacked  an  open  road 
Among  the  men.     A  glitter  in  his  stare 
Belied  the  smile  he  bore ;  and,  pausing  there 
With  stiffened  index  finger  raised  and  held 
Before  the  jester's  eyes,  as  though  he  spelled 
The  slow  words  out,  he  said :    "We'll  have  no 

jokes 

In  just  that  way  about  our  women  folks !" 
And  Fink  guffawed. 

They  would  have  fought  again, 
Had  not  the  Major  stepped  between  the  men 
And  talked  the  crisis  by.     And  when  'twas  past, 
Talbeau,  intent  to  end  the  strife  at  last, 
Somehow  persuaded  Fink  to  make  amends, 
And,    as    a    proof  that    henceforth    they    were 
friends, 


84       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Proposed  the  shooting  of  the  whisky  cup. 
"Shure,  b'y,"  said  Mike,  "we'll  toss  a  copper  up 
And  if  'tis  heads  I'll  thry  me  cunning  first. 
As  fer  me  joke,  the  tongue  of  me  is  cursed 
Wid  double  j'ints  —  so  let  it  be  forgot !" 
And  so  it  was  agreed. 

They  cleared  a  spot 

And  flipped  a  coin  that  tinkled  as  it  fell. 
A  tiny  sound  —  yet,  like  a  midnight  bell 
That  sets  wild  faces  pressing  at  the  pane, 
Talbeau  would  often  hear  that  coin  again, 
In  vivid  dreams,  to  waken  terrified. 
'Twas  heads. 

And  now  the  tall  man  stepped  aside 
And,  beckoning  Talbeau,  he  whispered  :  "Son, 
If  anything  should  happen,  keep  my  gun 
For   old   time's    sake.      And   when   the   Major 

pays 

In  old  St.  Louis,  drink  to  better  days 
When  friends  were  friends,  with  what  he's  owing 

me." 

Whereat  the  little  man  laughed  merrily 
And   said :    "Old   Horse,   you're  off  your  feed 

to-day ; 
But  if  you've  sworn  an  oath  to  blow  your  pay, 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          85 

I  guess  the  three  of  us  ean  make  it  good  ! 
Mike  couldn't  miss  a  target  if  he  would." 
"Well,  maybe  so,"  said  Carpenter,  and  smiled. 

A  windless  noon  was  brooding  on  the  wild 
And  in  the  clearing,  eager  for  the  show, 
The  waiting  trappers  chatted.     Now  Talbeau 
Stepped  off  the  range.     The  tall  man  took  his 

place, 

The  grin  of  some  droll  humor  on  his  face ; 
And  when  his  friend  was  reaching  for  his  head 
To  set  the  brimming  cup  thereon,  he  said  : 
"You  won't  forget  I  gave  my  gun  to  you 
And  all  my  blankets  and  my  fixin's  too  ?" 
The  small  man  laughed  and,  turning  round,  he 

cried : 
"We're  ready,  Mike!" 

A  murmur  ran  and  died 
Along  the  double  line  of  eager  men. 
Fink  raised  his  gun,  but  set  it  down  again 
And  blew  a  breath  and  said :   "I'm  gittin'  dhry ! 
So  howld  yer  noddle  shtiddy,  Bill,  me  b'y, 
And  don't  ye  shpill  me  whisky !"     Cedar-straight 
The  tall  man  stood,  the  calm  of  brooding  Fate 
About  him.     Aye,  and  often  to  the  end 
Talbeau  would  see  that  vision  of  his  friend  — 


86       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  man-flower  springing  from  the  fresh  green  sod, 
While,  round  about,  the  bushes  burned  with  God 
And  mating  peewees  fluted  in  the  brush. 

They  heard  a  gun  lock  clicking  in  the  hush. 
They  saw  Fink  sighting  —  heard  the  rifle  crack, 
And  saw  beneath  the  spreading  powder  rack- 
The  tall  man  pitching  forward. 

Echoes  fled 

Like  voices  in  a  panic.     Then  Mike  said  : 
"Bejasus,  and  yeVe  shpilled  me  whisky,  Bill!" 

A  catbird  screamed.     The  crowd  stood  very  still 
As  though  bewitched. 

"And  can't  ye  hear?"  bawled  Fink; 
"I  say,  Fm  dhry  —  and  now  ye've  shpilled  me 

drink!" 
He  stooped  to  blow  the  gasses  from  his  gun. 

And  now  men  saw  Talbeau.     They  saw  him  run 
And  stoop  to  peer  upon  the  prostrate  man 
Where  now  the  mingling  blood  and  whisky  ran 
From  oozing  forehead  and  the  tilted  cup. 
And  in  the  hush  a  sobbing  cry  grew  up : 
"  My  God  !    You' ve  killed  him,  Mike ! " 


THE  SHOOTING  OF  THE  CUP          87 

Then  growing  loud, 

A  wind  of  horror  blew  among  the  crowd 
And  set  it  swirling  round  about  the  dead. 
And  over  all  there  roared  a  voice  that  said : 
"  I  niver  mint  to  do  it,  b'ys,  I  swear ! 
The  divil's  in  me  gun !"     Men  turned  to  stare 
Wild-eyed  upon  the  center  of  that  sound, 
And  saw  Fink  dash  his  rifle  to  the  ground, 
As  'twere  the  hated  body  of  his  wrong. 

Once  more  arose  that  wailing,  like  a  song, 
Of  one  who  called  and  called  upon  his  friend. 


VII 

THE  THIRD  RIDER 

It  seemed  the  end,  and  yet  'twas  not  the  end. 

A  day  that  wind  of  horror  and  surprise 

Blew  high ;    and  then,  as  when  the  tempest  dies 

And  only  aspens  prattle,  as  they  will, 

Though  pines  win  silence  and  the  oaks  are  still, 

By  furtive  twos  and  threes  the  talk  survived. 

To  some  it  seemed  that  men  were  longer  lived 

Who  quarreled  not  over  women.     Others  guessed 

That  love  was  bad  for  marksmanship  at  best  — 

The   nerves,   you    know!    Still    others    pointed 

out 

Why  Mike  should  have  the  benefit  of  doubt ; 
For  every  man,  who  knew  a  rifle,  knew 
That  there  were  days  you'd  split  a  reed  in  two, 
Off-hand  at  fifty  paces ;  then,  one  day, 
Why,   somehow,   damn  your  eyes,  you'd   blaze 

away 

And  miss  a  bull !    No  doubt  regarding  that ! 
"But,"  one  replied,  "'tis  what  you're  aiming  at, 
Not  what  you  hit,  determines  skill,  you  know !" — 
An  abstract  observation,  apropos 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  89 

Of  nothing  in  particular,  but  made 

As  just  a  contribution  to  the  trade 

Of  gunnery  !     And  others  would  recall 

The  center  of  that  silence  in  the  hall 

The  night  one  lay  there   waiting,   splendid,   still, 

And  nothing  left  to  wait  for.     Poor  old  Bill ! 

There  went   a  man,   by  God !    Who  knew  his 

like  — 
So    meek    in    might  ?    And    some    remembered 

Mike  — 

The  hearth-lit  room  —  the  way  he  came  to  look 
Upon  that  face  —  and  how  his  shoulders  shook 
With  sobbing  as  he  moaned  :   "My  friend  !     My 

friend  I" 

It  seemed  the  end,  and  yet  'twas  not  the  end, 
Though  men  cared  less  to  know  what  cunning 

gnome 

Or  eyeless  thing  of  doom  had  ridden  home 
The  deadly  slug.    And  then  there  came  a  day 
When  Major  Henry  had  a  word  to  say 
That  seemed,  at  last,  to  lay  the  ghost  to  rest. 
He  meant  to  seek  the  River  of  the  West 
Beyond  the  range,  immensely  rich  in  furs, 
And  for  the  wiving  prows  of  voyageurs 
A  virgin  yearning.     Yonder  one  might  glide 
A  thousand  miles  to  sunset,  where  the  tide 


90       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Is  tempered  with  an  endless  dream  of  May ! 
So  much  and  more  the  Major  had  to  say  — 
Words    big   with    magic   for   the   young   men's 

ears. 

And  finally  he  called  for  volunteers  — 
Two  men  to  hasten  to  the  Moreau's  mouth, 
Meet  Ashley's  party  coming  from  the  south 
And  bid  them  buy  more  horses  at  the  Grand 
Among  the  Rees.     Then,  pushing  through  the 

band, 
Mike  Fink  stood  forth,  and  after  him,  Talbeau. 

Now  Henry  thought  'twere  wiser  they  should 

go 

By  land,  although  the  river  trail,  he  knew, 
Were  better.     But  a  wind  of  rumor  blew 
Up  stream.     About  the  region  of  the  Knife, 
It  seemed,  the  Grovans  tarried,  nursing  strife 
Because  the  Whites  were  favoring  their  foes 
With    trade    for   guns;    and,  looking   on  their 

bows, 

The  Grovans  hated.    So  the  rumor  said. 
And  thus  it  came  to  pass  the  new  trail  led 
About  six  days  by  pony  to  the  south ; 
Thence  eastward,  five  should  find  the  Moreau's 

mouth 
And  Ashley  toiling  up  among  the  bars. 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  91 

The  still  white  wind  was  blowing  out  the  stars 
When  yawning  trappers  saw  the  two  men  row 
Across  the  river  with  their  mounts  in  tow  — 
A  red  roan  stallion  and  a  buckskin  mare. 
And  now  the  ponies  gain  the  far  bank  there 
And  flounder  up  and  shake  themselves  like  dogs. 
And    now    the    riders    mount    and    breast    the 

fogs 

Flung  down  as  wool  upon  the  flat.     They  dip 
And  rise  and  float,  submerging  to  the  hip, 
Turn  slowly  into  shadow  men,  and  fade. 
And  some  have  said  that  when  the  ponies  neighed, 
'Twas  like  a  strangled  shriek;   and  far  ahead 
Some  ghostly  pony,  ridden  by  the  dead, 
Called  onward  like  a  bugle  singing  doom. 
And  when  the  valley  floor,  as  with  a  broom, 
Was  swept  by  dawn,  men  saw  the  empty  land. 

Not  now  the  Song  shall  tell  of  Henry's  band 
Ascending  to  the  Falls,  nor  how  they  crossed 
The  Blackfoot  trail,  nor  how  they  fought  and 

lost, 

Thrown  back  upon  the  Yellowstone  to  wait 
In  vain  for  Ashley's  hundred.     Yonder,  Fate 
Led    southward    through   the   fog,   and    thither 

goes 
The  prescient  Song. 


92       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The  April  sun  arose 

And  fell ;  and  all  day  long  the  riders  faced 
A  rolling,  treeless,  melancholy  waste 
Of  yellow  grass ;  for  'twas  a  rainless  time, 
Nor  had  the  baby  green  begun  to  climb 
The    steep-kneed    hills,    but    kept    the    nursing 

draws. 

And  knee  to  knee  they  rode  with  scarce  a  pause, 
Save  when  the  ponies  drank ;   and  scarce  a  word, 
As  though  the  haunting  silence  of  a  third, 
Who  rode  between  them,  shackled  either  tongue. 
And  when  along  the  sloughs  the  twilight  flung 
Blue  haze,  and  made  the  hills  seem  doubly  bleak, 
They  camped  beside  a  songless  little  creek 
That  crawled  among  the  clumps  of  stunted  plum 
Just  coming  into  bud.     And  both  sat  dumb 
Beside  a  mewing  fire,  until  the  west 
Was  darkened  and  the  shadows  leaped  and  pressed 
About  their  little  ring  of  feeble  light. 
Then,  moved    by    some    vague   menace  in  the 

night, 

Fink  forced  a  laugh  that  wasn't  glad  at  all, 
And  joked  about  a  certain  saddle  gall 
That  troubled  him  —  a  Rabelaisian  quip 
That  in  the  good  old  days  had  served  to  strip 
The  drooping  humor  from  the  dourest  jowl. 
He  heard  the  laughter  of  the  prairie  owl, 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  93 

A  goblin  jeering.     Gazing  at  the  flame, 

Talbeau  seemed  not  to  hear.     But  when  there 

came 

A  cry  of  kiotes,  peering  all  about 
He  said :    "You  don't  suppose  they'll  dig  him 

out? 

I  carried  heavy  stones  till  break  of  day. 
You  don't  suppose  they'll  come  and  paw  away 
The  heavy  stones  I  packed,  and  pester  Bill  ?" 
"Huh  uh,"  Fink  grunted;   but  the  evening  chill 
Seemed  doubled  on  a  sudden ;  so  he  sought 
His   blanket,   wrapped   it   closely,   thought   and 

thought 
Till  drowsy  nonsense  tumbled  through  his  skull. 

Now  at  that  time  of  night  when  comes  a  lull 
On  stormy  life ;  when  even  sorrow   sleeps, 
And  sentinels  upon  the  stellar  steeps 
Sight  morning,  though  the  world  is  blind  and 

dumb, 

Fink  wakened  at  a  whisper :    "Mike !  He's  come ! 
Look!    Look!"     And  Mike  sat  up  and  blinked 

and  saw. 

It  didn't  walk  —  it  burned  along  the  draw  — 
Tall,  radiantly  white  !     It  wasn't  dead  — 
It  smiled  —  it  had  a  tin  cup  on  its  head  — 
Eh  ?  —  Gone ! 


94       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Fink  stirred  the  embers  to  a  flare. 
What    dream    was    this  ?    The    world    seemed 

unaware 

That  anything  at  all  had  come  to  pass. 
Contentedly  the  ponies  nipped  the  grass 
There  in  the  darkness;   and  the  night  was  still. 
They  slept  no  more,  but  nursed  the  fire  until 
The  morning  broke ;  then  ate  and  rode  away. 

They  weren't  any  merrier  that  day. 
And  each  spoke  little,  save  when  Fink  would  swear 
And  smirch  the  virtue  of  the  buckskin  mare 
For  picking  quarrels  with  the  roan  he  rode. 
(Did  not  the  Northwind  nag  her  like  a  goad, 
And  was  there  any  other  horse  to  blame  ?) 

The  worried  day  dragged  on  and  twilight  came  — 
A  dusty  gray.     They  climbed  a  hill  to  seek 
Some  purple  fringe  of  brush  that  marked  a  creek. 
The  prairie  seemed  an  endless  yellow  blur : 
Nor  might  they  choose  but  tarry  where  they  were 
And  pass  the  cheerless  night  as  best  they  could, 
For  they  had  seen  no  water-hole  or  wood 
Since  when  the  sun  was  halfway  down  the  sky ; 
And  there  would  be  no  stars  to  travel  by, 
So  thick  a  veil  of  dust  the  great  wind  wove. 
They  staked  their  ponies  in  a  leeward  cove, 
And,  rolling  in  their  blankets,  swooned  away. 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  95 

Talbeau    awoke    and    stared.     'Twas    breaking 

day! 

So  soon  ?     It  seemed  he  scarce  had  slept  a  wink ! 
He'd  have  another  snooze,  for  surely  Fink 
Seemed    far   from   waking,    sprawled    upon    the 

ground, 

His  loose  mouth  gaping  skyward  with  a  sound 
As  of  a  bucksaw  grumbling  through  a  knot. 
Talbeau  dropped  back  and  dreamed  the  sun  was 

hot 

Upon  his  face.     He  tried  but  failed  to  stir ; 
Whereat  he  knew  that  he  was  Carpenter 
And  hot-breatht  wolves  were  sniffing  round  his 

head! 

He  wasn't  dead  !     He  really  wasn't  dead  ! 
Would  no  one  come,  would  no  one  drive  them  off? 
His  cry  for  help  was  nothing  but  a  cough, 
For  something  choked  him.     Then  a  shrill  long 

scream 

Cut  knife-like  through  the  shackles  of  his  dream, 
And  once  again  he  saw  the  lurid  flare 
Of  morning  on  the  hills. 

What  ailed  the  mare  ? 
She    strained    her    tether,    neighing.     And    the 

roan  ? 
He  squatted,  trembling,  with  his  head  upthrown, 


96       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

And  lashed  his  tail  and  snorted  at  the  blast. 
Perhaps  some  prowling  grizzly  wandered  past. 
Talbeau  sat  up.     What  stifling  air !    How  warm  ! 
What    sound    was    that  ?     Perhaps    a    thunder 

storm 
Was  working   up.     He   coughed;    and   then   it 

broke 

Upon  him  how  the  air  was  sharp  with  smoke ; 
And,  leaping  up,  he  turned  and  looked  and  knew 
What  birdless  dawn,  unhallowed  by  the  dew, 
Came   raging   from   the   northwest!      Half  the 

earth 

And  half  the  heavens  were  a  burning  hearth 
Fed  fat  with  grass  inflammable  as  tow ! 
He  shook  Fink,  yelling :  "Mike,  we've  got  to  go  ! 
All  hell's  broke  loose!" 

They  cinched  the  saddles  on 
With  hands  that  fumbled;    mounted  and  were 

gone, 

Like  rabbits  fleeing  from  a  kiote  pack. 
They  crossed   the  valley,  topped  a  rise,  looked 

back,  £.v  | 

Nor  dared  to  gaze.     The  firm,  familiar  world, 
It  seemed,  was  melting  down,  and  Chaos  swirled 
Once  more  across  the  transient  realms  of  form 
To  scatter  in  the  primal  atom-storm 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  97 

The  earth's  rich  dust  and  potency  of  dreams. 
Infernal  geysers  gushed,  and  sudden  streams 
Of  rainbow  flux  went  roaring  up  the  skies 
Through  ghastly  travesties  of  Paradise, 
Where,  drowsy  in  a  tropic  summertide, 
Strange  gaudy  flowers   bloomed   and   aged   and 

died  — 

Whole  seasons  in  a  moment.     Bloody  rain, 
Blown  slant  like  April  silver,  spewed  the  plain 
To  mock  the  fallow  sod ;   and  where  it  fell 
Anemones  and  violets  of  hell 
Foreran  the  fatal  summer. 

Spurs  bit  deep. 

Now  down  the  hill  where  shadow-haunted  sleep 
Fell  from  the  broken  wind's  narcotic  breath, 
The  ponies  plunged.     A  sheltered  draw,  where 

death 
Seemed    brooding   in    the   silence,   heard    them 

pass. 

A  hollow,  deep  with  tangled  jointed  grass, 
Snatched  at  the  frantic  hoofs.     Now  up  a  slope 
They  clambered,  blowing,  at  a  stumbling  lope 
And,  reined  upon  the  summit,  wheeled  to  stare. 
The  stallion  snorted,  and  the  rearing  mare 
Screamed  at  the  sight  and  bolted  down  the  wind. 
The  writhing  Terror,  scarce  a  mile  behind, 


98       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Appeared  to  gain ;  while  far  to  left  and  right 
Its  flanks  seemed  bending  in  upon  the  night  — 
A  ten-league  python  closing  on  its  prey. 

No  guiding  hand  was  needed  for  the  way; 
Blind  speed  was  all.     So  little  Nature  heeds 
The  fate  of  men,  these  blew  as  tumbleweeds 
Before  that  dwarfing,  elemental  rage. 
A  gray  wolf  bounded  from  a  clump  of  sage ; 
A  rabbit  left  its  bunchgrass  nest  and  ran 
Beside  its  foe ;  and  neither  dreaded  Man, 
The  deadliest  of  all  earth's  preying  things. 
A  passing  knoll  exploded  into  wings, 
And  prairie  owls,  befuddled  by  the  light, 
Went  tumbling  up  like  patches  of  the  night 
The  burning  tempest  tattered. 

Leaning  low, 

The  gasping  riders  let  the  ponies  go, 
The  little  buckskin  leading,  while  the  roan 
Strove  hard  a-flank,  afraid  to  be  alone 
And  nickering  at  whiles.     And  he  who  led, 
By  brief  hypnotic  lapses  comforted, 
Recalled  the  broad  Ohio,  heard  the  horns 
The  way  they  used  to  sing  those  summer  morns 
When  he  and  Mike  and  — .     There  the  dream 

went  wrong 
And  through  his  head  went  running,  like  a  song 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  99 

That  sings  itself:   'He  tried  so  hard  to  come 
And  warn  us ;  but  the  grave  had  made  him  dumb, 
And  'twas  to  show  he  loved  us  that  he  smiled/ 
And  of  the  other  terror  made  a  child 
Whom  often,  for  a  panic  moment's  span, 
Projections  from  the  conscience  of  the  man 
Pursued  with  glaring  eyes  and  claws  of  flame. 
For  this  the  dead  arose,  for  this  he  came  — 
That  grin  upon  his  face ! 

A  blinding  gloom 
Crushed    down;     then,    followed    by    a    rolling 

boom, 

There  broke  a  scarlet  hurricane  of  light 
That  swept  the  farthest  reaches  of  the  night 
Where  unsuspected  hills  leaped  up  aghast. 
Already  through  the  hollow  they  had  passed 
So  recently,  the  hounding  Terror  sped  ! 
And  now  the  wind  grew  hotter.     Overhead 
Inverted  seas  of  color  rolled  and  broke, 
And  from  the  combers  of  the  litten  smoke 
A  stinging  spindrift  showered. 

On  they  went, 

Unconscious  of  duration  or  extent, 
Of  everything  but  that  from  which  they  fled. 
Now,  sloping  to  an  ancient  river  bed, 


ioo     THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The  prairie  flattened.     Plunging  downward  there, 
The  riders  suddenly  became  aware 
How  surged,  beneath,  a  mighty  shadow-stream  — 
As  though  the  dying  Prairie  dreamed  a  dream 
Of  yesterage  when  all  her  valleys  flowed 
With  Amazons,  and  monster  life  abode 
Upon  her  breast  and  quickened  in  her  womb. 
And   from   that   rushing   in   the    flame-smeared 

gloom 

Unnumbered  outcries  blended  in  a  roar. 
The  headlong  ponies  struck  the  sounding  shore 
And  reared  upon  their  haunches.     Far  and  near, 
The  valley  was  a-flood  with  elk  and  deer 
And  buffalo  and  wolves  and  antelope 
And  whatsoever  creature  slough  and  slope 
Along  the  path  of  terror  had  to  give. 
Torrential  with  the  common  will  to  live, 
The  river  of  unnumbered  egos  swept 
The  ponies  with  it.     But  the  buckskin  kept 
The  margin  where  the  rabble  frayed  and  thinned 
And,  breathing  with  the  wheeze  of  broken  wind, 
The  stallion  clung  to  her. 

It  came  to  pass 

The  valley  yawned  upon  a  sea  of  grass 
That  seemed  to  heave,  as  waves  of  gloom  and  glare 
Ran  over  it ;  and,  rising  here  and  there, 


THE  THIRD    RIDER  101 

Tall  buttes  made  islands  in  the  living  tide 

That   roared   about  them.     Still  with   swinging 

stride 

And  rhythmic  breath  the  little  buckskin  ran 
Among  the  herd,  that  opened  like  a  fan 
And  scattered.     But  the  roan  was  losing  ground. 
His  breathing  gave  a  gurgling,  hollow  sound, 
As  though  his  life  were  gushing  from  his  throat. 
His  whole  frame  quivered  like  a  scuttled  boat 
That  slowly  sinks ;  nor  did  he  seem  to  feel 
Upon  his  flank  the  biting  of  the  steel 
That  made  him  bleed.     Fink  cut  the  rifle-boot 
And  saddle-bags  away,  to  give  the  brute 
Less  burden. 

Now  it  happened,  as  they  neared 
A  lofty  butte  whose  summit  glimmered  weird 
Beneath  the  lurid  boiling  of  the  sky, 
Talbeau  was  startled  by  a  frantic  cry 
Behind  him ;  noted  that  he  rode  alone, 
And,  turning  in  the  saddle,  saw  the  roan 
Go  stumbling  down  and  wither  to  a  heap. 
And  momently,  between  a  leap  and  leap, 
The  love  of  self  was  mighty  in  the  man ; 
For  now  the  Terror  left  the  hills  and  ran 
With  giant  strides  along  the  grassy  plains. 
Dear  Yesterdays  fought  wildly  for  the  reins, 


102      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

To-morrows  for  the  spur.     And  then  the  mare 
Heeled  to  the  sawing  bit  and  pawed  the  air 
And  halted,  prancing. 

Once  again  Talbeau 
Looked  back  to  where  the  sparks  were  blown  as 

snow 

Before  that  blizzard  blast  of  scorching  light, 
And  saw  Fink  running  down  the  painted  night 
Like  some  lost  spirit  fleeing  from  the  Wrath. 

One  horse  —  and  who   should   ride  it  ?    All  he 

hath 

A  man  will  give  for  life !     But  shall  he  give 
For  living  that  which  makes  it  good  to  live  — 
The  consciousness  of  fellowship  and  trust  ? 
Let  fools  so  prize  a  pinch  of  throbbing  dust ! 
Now  Fink  should  ride,  and  let  the  rest  be  hid. 
He  bounded  from  the  mare ;  but,  as  he  did, 
The  panic-stricken  pony  wheeled  about, 
Won    freedom    with    a    lunge,   and    joined   the 

rout 
Of  fleeing  shadows. 

Well,  'twas  over  now  — 
Perhaps  it  didn't  matter  anyhow  — 
They'd  go  together  now  and  hunt  for  Bill ! 
And  momently  the  world  seemed  very  still 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  103 

About  Talbeau.     Then  Fink  was  at  his  side, 
Blank  horror  in  his  face.     "Come  on  !"  he  cried; 
"The    butte!    We'll    climb    the    butte!"    And 

once  again 
Talbeau  knew  fear. 

Now,  gripping  hands,  the  men 
Scuttled  and  dodged  athwart  the  scattered  flight 
Of  shapes  that  drifted  in  the  flood  of  light, 
A  living  flotsam ;   reached  the  bare  butte' s  base, 
Went  scrambling  up  its  leaning  leeward  face 
To  where  the  slope  grew  sheer,  and  huddled  there. 
And  hotter,  hotter,  hotter  grew  the  air, 
Until  their  temples  sang  a  fever  tune. 
The  April  night  became  an  August  noon. 
Then,  near  to  swooning  in  a  blast  of  heat, 
They  heard  the  burning  breakers  boom  and  beat 
About  their  lofty  island,  as  they  lay, 
Their  gaping  mouths  pressed  hard  against  the 

clay, 

And  fought  for  every  breath.   Nor  could  they  tell 
How  long  upon  a  blistered  scarp  in  hell 
They  gasped  and  clung.     But  suddenly  at  last  — 
An  age  in  passing,  and  a  moment,  passed  — 
The  torture  ended,  and  the  cool  air  came ; 
And,  looking  out,  they  saw  the  long  slant  flame 
Devour  the  night  to  leeward. 


104       THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

By  and  by 

Drab  light  came  seeping  through  the  sullen  sky. 
They  waited  there  until  the  morning  broke, 
And,  like  a  misty  moon  amid  the  smoke, 
The  sun  came  stealing  up. 

They  found  a  place 
Where  rain  had  scarred  the  butte  wall's  western 

face 

With  many  runnels ;  clambered  upward  there  — 
And  viewed  a  panorama  of  despair. 
The  wind  had  died,  and  not  a  sound  arose 
Above  those  blackened  leagues ;  for  even  crows 
(The  solitude  embodied  in  a  bird) 
Had  fled  that  desolation.     Nothing  stirred, 
Save  here  and  there  a  thin  gray  column  grew 
From  where  some  draw  still  smouldered.    And 

they  knew 

How  universal  quiet  may  appal 
As  violence,  and,  even  as  a  wall, 
Sheer  vacancy  confine. 

No  horse,  no  gun ! 

Nay,  worse ;  no  hint  of  water  hole  or  run 
In  all  the  flat  or  back  among  the  hills  ! 
Mere  hunger  is  a  goad  that,  ere  it  kills, 
May  drive  the  lean  far  down  the  hardest  road : 
But  thirst  is  both  a  snaffle  and  a  load ; 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  105 

It  gripped  them  now.     When  Mike  made  bold  to 

speak, 

His  tongue  was  like  a  stranger  to  his  cheek. 
"Shure,  b'y>"  he  croaked;   "'tis  Sunday  morn  in 

hell!" 

The  sound  seemed  profanation ;  on  it  fell 
The  vast,  rebuking  silence. 

Long  they  gazed 

About  them,  standing  silent  and  amazed 
Upon  the  summit.     West  and  north  and  east 
They  saw  too  far.     But  mystery,  at  least, 
Was  in  the  south,  where   still  the   smoke  con- 
cealed 

The  landscape.    Vistas  of  the  unrevealed 
Invited  Hope  to  stray  there  as  it  please. 
And  presently  there  came  a  little  breeze 
Out  of  the  dawn.     As  of  a  crowd  that  waits 
Some  imminent  revealment  of  the  Fates 
That  toil  behind  the  scenes,  a  murmur  'woke 
Amid  the  hollow  hush.     And  now  the  smoke 
Mysteriously  stirs,  begins  to  flow, 
And  giant  shadow  bulks  that  loom  below 
Seem  crowding  dawnward.     One  by  one  they  lift 
Above  the  reek,  and  trail  the  ragged  drift 
About  their  flanks.     A  melancholy  scene ! 
Gray  buttes  and  giddy  gulfs  that  yawn  between  — 


io6      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  Titan's  labyrinth  !     But  see  afar 

Where  yonder  canyon  like  a  purple  scar 

Cuts  zigzag  through  the  waste !     Is  that  a  gleam 

Of  water  in  its  deeps  ? 

A  stream !    A  stream ! 

Now  scrambling  down  the  runnels  of  the  rain, 
They  struck  across  the  devastated  plain 
Where  losers  of  the  night's  mad  race  were  strewn 
To  wait  the  wolves  and  crows. 

Mid-afternoon 

Beheld  them  stripping  at  the  river's  bank. 
They  wallowed  in  the  turbid  stream  and  drank 
Delicious  beakers  in  the  liquid  mud ; 
Nor  drank  alone,  for  here  the  burning  flood 
Had  flung  its  panting  driftage  in  the  dark. 
The  valley  teemed  with  life,  as  though  some  Ark 
That  rode  the  deluge,  spewed  its  cargo  here : 
Elk,  antelope,  wolves,  bison,  rabbits,  deer, 
Owls,  crows  —  the  greatest  mingled  with  the  least. 
And  when  the  men  had  drunk,  they  had  a  feast 
Of  liver,  bolted  dripping  from  a  cow 
Dead  at  the  water's  lip. 

Blue  shadow  now 

Was  mounting  slowly  up  the  canyon  steep ; 
So,  seeking  for  a  better  place  to  sleep, 


THE  THIRD  RIDER  107 

They  wandered  down  the  margin  of  the  stream. 
'Twas  scarce  more  real  than  walking  in  a  dream 
Of  lonely  craters  in  a  lunar  land 
That  never  thrilled  with  roots.     On  either  hand 
The  dwarfing  summits  soared,  grotesque,  austere, 
And  jagged  fissures,  sentinelled  with  fear, 
Led  back  to  mysteries  of  purple  gloom. 

They  came  to  where  a  coulee,  like  a  flume, 
Rose  steeply  to  the  prairie.     Thither  hurled, 
A  roaring  freshet  of  the  herd  had  swirled, 
Cascading  to  the  river  bed ;  and  there, 
Among  the  trampelled  carcasses,  the  mare 
Lay  bloated  near  the  water.     She  had  run 
With  saddle,  panniers,  powder-horn  and  gun 
Against  the  wind-thewed  fillies  of  the  fire, 
And  won  the  heat,  to  perish  at  the  wire  — 
A  plucky  little  brute ! 


VIII 

VENGEANCE 

They  made  a  camp 

Well  up  above  the  crawling  valley  damp, 
And  where  no  prowling  beast  might  chance  to 

come. 

There  was  no  fuel ;  but  a  flask  of  rum, 
Thanks  to  the  buckskin,  dulled  the  evening  chill. 
And  both  grew  mellow.     Memories  of  Bill 
And  other  nights  possessed  the  little  man ; 
And  on  and  on  his  reminiscence  ran, 
As  'twere  the  babble  of  a  brook  of  tears 
Gone  groping  for  the  ocean  of  dead  years 
Too  far  away  to  reach.     And  by  and  by 
The  low  voice  sharpened  to  an  anguished  cry : 
"0  Mike !     I  said  you  couldn't  miss  the  cup !" 

Then  something  snapped  in  Fink  and,  leaping  up, 
He  seized  Talbeau  and  shook  him  as  a  rat 
Is  shaken  by  a  dog.     "Enough  of  that !" 
He  yelled ;   "And,  'faith,  Til  sind  ye  afther  Bill 
Per  wan  more  wurrd  !    Ye  fool !     I  mint  to  kill ! 
And,  moind  me  now,  ye'd  better  howld  yer  lip  !" 
108 


VENGEANCE  109 

Talbeau  felt  murder  shudder  in  the  grip 

That  choked  and  shook  and  flung  him.     Faint 

and  dazed, 

He  sprawled  upon  the  ground.     And  anger  blazed 
Within  him,  like  the  leaping  Northern  Light 
That  gives  no  heat.      He  wished   to  rise   and 

fight, 

But  could  not  for  the  horror  of  it  all. 
Wild  voices  thronged  the  further  canyon  wall 
As  Fink  raved  on ;  and  every  word  he  said 
Was  like  a  mutilation  of  the  dead 
By  some  demonic  mob. 

And  when  at  length 

He  heard  Mike  snoring  yonder,  still  the  strength 
To  rise  and  kill  came  not  upon  Talbeau. 
So  many  moments  of  the  Long  Ago 
Came  pleading;    and  the  gentle  might  thereof 
United  with  the  habit  of  old  love 
To  weave  a  spell  about  the  sleeping  man. 
Then  drowsily  the  pondered  facts  began 
To  merge  and  group,  as  running  colors  will, 
In  new  and  vaguer  patterns.     Mike  and  Bill 
Were  bickering  again.    And  someone  said : 
"Let's  flip  a  copper;  if  it's  tails,  he's  dead ; 
If  heads,  he's  living.    That's  the  way  to  tell !" 
A  spinning  copper  jangled  like  a  bell. 


I  io     THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

But  even  as  he  stooped  to  pick  it  up, 

Behold  !  the  coin  became  a  whisky  cup 

Bored  smoothly  through  the  center!     "Look  at 

this!" 
He  seemed  to  shout:    "I  knew  Mike  couldn't 

miss! 
Bill  only  played  at  dying  for  a  joke !" 

Then  laughter  filled  his  dream,  and  he  awoke. 
The  dawn  was  like  a  stranger's  cold  regard 
Across  the  lifeless  land,  grotesquely  scarred 
As  by  old  sorrow ;   and  the  man's  dull  sense 
Of  woe,  become  objective  and  immense, 
Seemed  waiting  there  to  crush  him. 

Fink  still  slept ; 

And  even  now,  it  seemed,  his  loose  mouth  kept 
A  shape  for  shameless  words,  as  though  a  breath, 
Deep  drawn,  might  set  it  gloating  o'er  the  death 
Of  one  who  loved  its  jesting  and  its  song. 
And  while  Talbeau  sat  pondering  the  wrong 
So  foully  done,  and  all  that  had  been  killed, 
And  how  the  laughter  of  the  world  was  stilled 
And  all  its  wine  poured  out,  he  seemed  to  hear 
As  though  a  spirit  whispered  in  his  ear : 
You  wont  forget  I  gave  my  gun  to  you! 
And  instantly  the  deep  conviction  grew 


VENGEANCE          in 

That  'twas  a  plea  for  justice  from  the  slain. 
Ah,  not  without  a  hand  upon  the  rein, 
Nor  with  an  empty  saddle,  had  the  mare 
Outrun  the  flame  that  she  might  carry  there 
The  means  of  vengeance ! 

Yet  —  if  Mike  were  dead  ! 
He  shuddered,  gazing  where  the  gray  sky  bled 
With  morning,  like  a  wound.     He  couldn't  kill ; 
Nor  did  it  seem  to  be  the  way  of  Bill 
To  bid  him  do  it.     Yet  the  gun  was  sent. 
For  what  ?  —  To  make  Mike  suffer  and  repent  ? 
But  how? 

Awhile  his  apathetic  gaze 

Explored  yon  thirst-  and  hunger-haunted  maze, 
As  though  he  might  surprise  the  answer  there. 
The  answer  came.     That  region  of  despair 
Should  be  Mike's  Purgatory  !    More  than  Chance 
Had  fitted  circumstance  to  circumstance 
That  this  should  be  !     He  knew  it !     And  the  plan, 
Thus  suddenly  conceived,  possessed  the  man. 
It  seemed  the  might  of  Bill  had  been  reborn 
In  him. 

He  took  the  gun  and  powder  horn, 
The  water  flasks  and  sun-dried  bison  meat 
The  panniers  gave ;  then  climbing  to  a  seat 


112      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Above  the  sleeper,  shouted  down  to  him  : 
"Get  up  !"     Along  the  further  canyon  rim 
A  multitude  of  voices  swelled  the  shout. 
Fink  started  up  and  yawned  and  looked  about, 
Bewildered.     Once  again  the  clamor  ran 
Along  the  canyon  wall.     The  little  man, 
Now  squinting  down  the  pointed  rifle,  saw 
The  lifted  face  go  pale,  the  stubborn  jaw 
Droop  nervelessly.     A  twinge  of  pity  stirred 
Within  him,  and  he  marvelled  as  he  heard 
His  own  voice  saying  what  he  wished  unsaid : 
"It's  Bill's  own  rifle  pointing  at  your  head ; 
Go    east,    and    think  of    all    the  wrong  you've 
done!" 

Fink  glanced  across  his  shoulder  where  the  sun 
Shone  level  on  the  melancholy  land ; 
And,  feigning  that  he  didn't  understand, 
Essayed  a  careless  grin  that  went  awry. 
"Bejasus,  and  we'll  not  go  there,  me  b'y," 
He  said  ;   "for  shure  'tis  hell  widout  the  lights  !" 
That  one-eyed  stare  along  the  rifle  sights 
Was  narrowed  to  a  slit.     A  sickening  shock 
Ran  through  him  at  the  clucking  of  the  lock. 
He   clutched  his   forehead,  stammering:    "Tal 

beau, 
I've  been  yer  frind  — ." 


VENGEANCE  113 

"I'll  give  you  three  to  go," 
The  other  said,  "or  else  you'll  follow  Bill ! 
One  —  two  — ." 

Fink  turned  and  scuttled  down  the  hill ; 
And  at  the  sight  the  watcher's  eyes  grew  dim, 
For  something  old  and  dear  had  gone  from  him  — 
His  pride  in  one  who  made  a  clown  of  Death. 
Alas,  how  much  the  man  would  give  for  breath ! 
How  easily  Death  made  of  him  the  clown  ! 

Now  scrambling  for  a  grip,  now  rolling  down, 

Mike  landed  at  the  bottom  of  the  steep, 

And,  plunging  in  the  river  belly  deep, 

Struck  out  in  terror  for  the  other  shore. 

At  any  moment  might  the  rifle's  roar 

Crash  through   that   rearward   silence,   and   the 

lead 

Come  snarling  like  a  hornet  at  his  head  — 
He  felt  the  spot !    Then  presently  the  flood 
Began  to  cool  the  fever  in  his  blood, 
And  furtive  self-derision  stung  his  pride. 
He  clambered  dripping  up  the  further  side 
And  felt  himself  a  fool !     He  wouldn't  go  ! 
That  little  whiffet  yonder  was  Talbeau  ! 
And  who  was  this  that  he,  Mike  Fink,  had  feared  ? 
He'd  go  and  see. 
i 


Ii4      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

A  spurt  of  smoke  appeared 
Across  the  river,  and  a  bullet  struck  — 
Spat  ping  —  beside  him,  spewing  yellow  muck 
Upon  his  face.     Then  every  cliff  and  draw 
Rehearsed  the  sullen  thunders  of  the  law 
He  dared  to  question.     Stricken  strangely  weak, 
He  clutched  the  clay  and  watched  the  powder  reek 
Trail  off  with  glories  of  the  level  sun. 
He  saw  Talbeau  pour  powder  in  his  gun 
And  ram  the  wad.     A  second  shot  might  kill ! 
That  brooding  like  a  woman  over  Bill 
Had  set  the  fellow  daft.     A  crazy  man! 
The  notion  spurred  him.     Springing  up,  he  ran 
To  where  a  gully  cleft  the  canyon  rim 
And,  with  that  one-eyed  fury  after  him, 
Fled  east. 

The  very  buttes,  grotesque  and  weird, 
Seemed  startled  at  the  sight  of  what  he  feared 
And  powerless  to  shield  him  in  his  need. 
'Twas  more  than  man  he  fled  from  ;  'twas  a  deed, 
Become  alive  and  subtle  as  the  air, 
That  turned  upon  the  doer.     Everywhere 
It  gibbered  in  the  echoes  as  he  fled. 
A  stream  of  pictures  flitted  through  his  head  : 
The  quiet  body  in  the  hearth-lit  hall, 
The  grinning  ghost,  the  flight,  the  stallion's  fall, 


VENGEANCE  115 

The  flame  girt  isle,  the  spectral  morning  sun, 
And  then  the  finding  of  the  dead  man's  gun 
Beside  the  glooming  river.     Flowing  by, 
These  fused  and  focused  in  the  deadly  eye 
He  felt  behind  him. 

Suddenly  the  ground 
Heaved    up    and    smote    him   with    a    crashing 

sound ; 

And  in  the  vivid  moment  of  his  fall 
He  thought  he  heard  the  snarling  rifle  ball 
And  felt  the  one-eyed  fury  crunch  its  mark. 
Expectant  of  the  swooping  of  the  dark, 
He    raised    his    eyes.  —  The    sun    was    shining 

still ; 

It  peeped  about  the  shoulder  of  a  hill 
And  viewed  him  with  a  quizzifying  stare. 
He    looked    behind    him.       Nothing    followed 

there ; 

But  Silence,  big  with  dread-begotten  sound, 
Dismayed  him ;  and  the  steeps  that  hemmed  him 

round 

Seemed  plotting  with  a  more  than  human  guile. 
He  rose  and  fled ;  but  every  little  while 
A  sense  of  eyes  behind  him  made  him  pause; 
And  always  down  the  maze  of  empty  draws 
It  seemed  a  sound  of  feet  abruptly  ceased. 


ii6     THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Now  trotting,  walking  now,  he  labored  east ; 
And  when  at  length  the  burning  zenith  beat 
Upon  him,  and  the  summits  swam  with  heat, 
And  on  the  winding  gullies  fell  no  shade, 
He  came  to  where  converging  gulches  made 
A  steep-walled  basin  for  the  blinding  glare. 
Here,  fanged  and  famished,  crawled  the  prickly 

pear; 

Malevolent  with  thirst,  the  soap  weed  thrust 
Its  barbed  stilettos  from  the  arid  dust, 
Defiant  of  the  rain-withholding  blue : 
And  in  the  midst  a  lonely  scrub  oak  grew, 
A  crooked  dwarf  that,  in  the  pictured  bog 
Of  its  own  shadow,  squatted  like  a  frog. 
Fink,  panting,  flung  himself  beneath  its  boughs. 
A  mighty  magic  in  the  noonday  drowse 
Allayed  the  driving  fear.     A  waking  dream 
Fulfilled  a  growing  wish.     He  saw  the  stream 
Far  off  as  from  a  space-commanding  height. 
And  now  a  phantasy  of  rapid  flight 
Transported  him  above  the  sagging  land, 
And  with  a  sudden  swoop  he  seemed  to  stand 
Once  more  upon  the  shimmering  river's  brink. 
His  eyes  drank  deep ;  but  when  his  mouth  would 

drink, 

A  giant  hornet  from  the  other  shore  — 
The  generating  center  of  a  roar 
That  shook  the  world  —  snarled  by. 


VENGEANCE  117 

He  started  up, 

And  saw  the  basin  filling  as  a  cup 
With  purple  twilight !     Gazing  all  around 
Where  still  the  flitting  ghost  of  some  great  sound 
Troubled  the  crags  a  moment,  then  was  mute, 
He  saw  along  the  shoulder  of  a  butte, 
A  good  three  hundred  paces  from  the  oak, 
A  slowly  spreading  streak  of  rifle  smoke 
And  knew  the  deadly  eye  was  lurking  there. 
He  fled  again. 

About  him  everywhere 
Amid  the  tangled  draws  now  growing  dim, 
Weird  witnesses  took  cognizance  of  him 
And  told  abroad  the  winding  way  he  ran. 
He  halted  only  when  his  breath  began 
To  stab  his  throat.     And  lo,  the  staring  eye 
Was  quenched  with  night !     No  further  need  he 

fly 
Till  dawn.     And  yet — .     He  held  his  breath  to 

hear 

If  footsteps  followed.     Silence  smote  his  ear, 
The  gruesome  silence  of  the  hearth-lit  hall, 
More  dread  than  sound.     Against  the  gully  wall 
He  shrank  and  huddled  with  his  eyes  shut  tight, 
For  fear  a  presence,  latent  in  the  night, 
Should  walk  before  him. 


ii8      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Then  it  seemed  he  ran 
Through  regions  alien  to  the  feet  of  Man, 
A  weary  way  despite  the  speed  of  sleep, 
And  came  upon  a  river  flowing  deep 
Between  black  crags  that  made  the  sky  a  well. 
And  eerily  the  feeble  starlight  fell 
Upon  the  flood  with  water  lilies  strown. 
But  when  he  stooped,  the  stream  began  to  moan, 
And  suddenly  from  every  lily  pad 
A  white  face  bloomed,  unutterably  sad 
And  bloody  browed. 

A  swift,  erasing  flame 
Across  the  dusky  picture,  morning  came. 
Mike  lay  a  moment,  blinking  at  the  blue ; 
And  then  the  fear  of  yesterday  broke  through 
The  clinging  drowse.     For  lo,  on  every  side 
The  paling  summits  watched  him,  Argus-eyed, 
In  hushed  anticipation  of  a  roar. 
He  fled. 

All  day,  intent  to  see  once  more 
The  open  plain  before  the  night  should  fall, 
He  labored  on.     But  many  a  soaring  wall 
Annulled  some  costly  distance  he  had  won ; 
And  misdirected  gullies,  white  with  sun, 
Seemed  spitefully  to  baffle  his  desire. 


VENGEANCE  119 

The  deeps  went  blue ;  on  mimic  dome  and  spire 

The  daylight  faded  to  a  starry  awe. 

Mike   slept;    and   lo,   they  marched    along  the 

draw  — 

Or  rather  burned  —  tall,  radiantly  white ! 
A  hushed  procession,  tunnelling  the  night, 
They  came,  with  lips  that  smiled  and  brows  that 

bled, 

And  each  one  bore  a  tin  cup  on  its  head, 
A  brimming  cup.     But  ever  as  they  came 
Before  him,  like  a  draught-struck  candle  flame 
They  shuddered  and  were  snuffed.     Bancroft 

'Twas  deep  night  yet 

When  Mike  awoke  and  felt  the  terror  sweat 
Upon  his  face,  the  prickling  of  his  hair. 
Afraid  to  sleep,  he  paced  the  gully  there 
Until  the  taller  buttes  were  growing  gray. 
He  brooded  much  on  flowing  streams  that  day. 
As  with  a  weight,  he  stooped ;  his  feet  were  slow ; 
He  shuffled.     Less  and  less  he  feared  Talbeau 
Behind   him.      More   and    more  he  feared  the 

night 

Before  him.    Any  hazard  in  the  light, 
Or  aught  that  might  befall  'twixt  living  men, 
Were  better  than  to  be  alone  again 
And  meet  that  dream ! 


120     THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

The  deeps  began  to  fill 
With  purple  haze.     Bewildered,  boding  ill, 
A  moaning  wind  awoke.     'Twould  soon  be  dark. 
Mike  pondered.    Twice  Talbeau  had  missed  the 

mark. 

Perhaps  he  hadn't  really  meant  to  hit. 
And  surely  now  that  flaring  anger  fit 
Had  burned  away.     It  wasn't  like  the  man 
To  hold  a  grudge.     Mike  halted,  and  began 
To  grope  for  words  regretful  of  the  dead, 
Persuasive  words  about  a  heart  that  bled 
For  Bill.     'Twas  all  a  terrible  mistake. 
"  Plase  now,  a  little  dhrop  fer  owld  toime's  sake !" 
With  troublesome  insistence,  that  refrain 
Kept  running  through  the  muddle  of  his  brain 
And  disarranged  the  words  he  meant  to  speak. 
The  trickle  of  a  tear  along  his  cheek 
Consoled  him.     Soon  his  suffering  would  end. 
Talbeau  would  see  him  weeping  for  his  friend  — 
Talbeau  had  water ! 

Now  the  heights  burned  red 
To  westward.    With  a  choking  clutch  of  dread 
He  noted  how  the  dusk  was  gathering 
Along  the  draws  —  a  trap  about  to  spring. 
He  cupped  his  hands  about  his  mouth  and  cried : 
"Talbeau!   Talbeau!"     Despairing  voices  died 


VENGEANCE  121 

Among  the  summits,  and  the  lost  wind  pined. 
It  made  Talbeau  seem  infinitely  kind  — 
The  one  thing  human  in  a  ghostly  land. 
Where  was  he  ?    Just  a  touch  of  that  warm  hand 
Would  thwart  the  dark !    Mike  sat  against  a  wall 
And  brooded. 

By  and  by  a  skittering  fall 
Of  pebbles  at  his  back  aroused  the  man. 
He  scrambled  to  his  feet  and  turned  to  scan 
The  butte  that  sloped  above  him.     Where  the 

glow 

Still  washed  the  middle  height,  he  saw  Talbeau 
Serenely  perched  upon  a  ledge  of  clay ! 
And  Mike  forgot  the  words  he  meant  to  say, 
The  fitted  words,  regretful  of  his  deed. 
A  forthright,  stark  sincerity  of  need 
Rough  hewed  the  husky,  incoherent  prayer 
He  shouted  to  that  Lord  of  water  there 
Above  the  gloom.     A  little  drop  to  drink 
For  old  time's  sake ! 

Talbeau  regarded  Fink 
Awhile  in  silence ;  then  his  thin  lips  curled. 
"You  spilled  the  only  drink  in  all  the  world  ! 
Go  on,"  he  said,  "and  think  of  what  you've 

done!" 
Beyond  the  pointed  muzzle  of  his  gun 


122      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

He  saw  the  big  man  wither  to  a  squat 
And  tremble,  like  a  bison  when  the  shot 
Just  nips  the  vital  circle.     Then  he  saw 
A  stooping  figure  hurry  down  the  draw, 
Grow  dim,  and  vanish  in  the  failing  light. 

Twas  long  before  Talbeau  could  sleep  that  night. 
Some  questioner,  insistently  perverse, 
Assailed  him  and  compelled  him  to  rehearse 
The  justifying  story  of  the  friend 
Betrayed  and  slain.     But  when  he  reached  the 

end, 

Still  unconvinced  the  questioner  was  there 
To  taunt  him  with  that  pleading  of  despair  — 
For  old  time's  sake!     Sleep  brought  him  little 

rest; 

For  what  the  will  denied,  the  heart  confessed 
In  mournful  dreams.     And  when  the  first  faint 

gray 

Aroused  him,  and  he  started  on  his  way, 
He  knew  the  stubborn  questioner  had  won. 
No  brooding  on  the  wrong  that  Mike  had  done 
Could   still    that    cry:    "Plase   now,   fer    owld 

toime's  sake, 

A  little  dhrop  !"     It  made  his  eyeballs  ache 
With  tears  of  pity  that  he  couldn't  shed. 
No  other  dawn,  save  that  when  Bill  lay  dead 


VENGEANCE 


123 


And  things  began  to  stare  about  the  hall, 
Had  found  the  world  so  empty.     After  all, 
What  man  could  know  the  way  another  trod  ? 
And  who  was  he,  Talbeau,  to  play  at  God  ? 
Let   one   who   curbs  the  wind   and    brews   the 

rain 

Essay  the  subtler  portioning  of  pain 
To  souls  that  err !    Talbeau  would  make  amends  ! 
Once  more  they'd  drink  together  and  be  friends. 
How  often  they  had  shared ! 

He  struck  a  trot, 

Eyes  fixed  upon  the  trail.     The  sun  rose  hot ; 
Noon  poured  a  blinding  glare  along  the  draws ; 
And  still  the  trail  led  on,  without  a  pause 
To  show  where  Mike  had  rested.     Thirst  began 
To  be  a  burden  on  the  little  man ; 
His  progress  dwindled  to  a  dragging  pace. 
But  when   he  tipped   the  flask,  that  pleading 

face 

Arose  before  him,  and  a  prayer  denied 
Came  mourning  back  to  thrust  his  need  aside  — 
A  little  drop !    How  Mike  must  suffer  now ! 
"  I'm  not  so  very  thirsty,  anyhow," 
He  told  himself.     And  almost  any  bend 
Might  bring  him  on  a  sudden  to  his  friend. 
He'd  wait  and  share  the  water. 


124      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

Every  turn 

Betrayed  a  hope.     The  west  began  to  burn ; 
Flared  red ;  went  ashen ;   and  the  stars  came  out. 
Dreams,  colored  by  an  unacknowledged  doubt, 
Perplexed  the  trail  he  followed  in  his  sleep ; 
And  dreary  hours  before  the  tallest  steep 
Saw  dawn,  Talbeau  was  waiting  for  the  day. 

Till  noon  he  read  a  writing  in  the  clay 

That  bade  him  haste ;   for  now  from  wall  to  wall 

The  footmarks  wandered,  like  the  crabbed  scrawl 

An  old  man  writes.      They  told  a  gloomy  tale. 

And  then  the  last  dim  inkling  of  a  trail 

Was  lost  upon  a  patch  of  hardened  ground  ! 

The  red  west  saw  him,  like  a  nervous  hound 
That  noses  vainly  for  the  vanished  track, 
Still  plunging  into  gullies,  doubling  back, 
And  pausing  now  and  then  to  hurl  a  yell 
Among  the  ululating  steeps.     Night  fell. 
The  starlit  buttes  still  heard  him  panting  by, 
And  summits  weird  with  midnight  caught  his  cry 
To  answer,  mocking. 

Morning  brought  despair; 
Nor  did  he  get  much  comfort  of  his  prayer : 
"God,  let  me  find  him !     Show  me  where  to  go  !" 
Some  greater,  unregenerate  Talbeau 


VENGEANCE  125 

Was  God  that  morning ;  for  the  lesser  heard 
His  own  bleak  answer  echoed  word  for  word : 

Go  on,  and  think  of  all  the  wrong  you've  done  ! 

His  futile  wish  to  hasten  sped  the  sun. 

That  day,  as  he  recalled  it  in  the  dark, 

Was  like  the  spinning  of  a  burning  arc. 

He  nodded,  and  the  night  was  but  a  swoon ; 

And  morning  neighbored  strangely  with  the  noon ; 

And  evening  was  the  noon's  penumbral  haze. 

No  further  ran  the  reckoning  of  days. 

'Twas  evening  when  at  last  he  stooped  to  stare 

Upon  a  puzzling  trail.     A  wounded  bear, 

It  seemed,  had  dragged  its  rump  across  the  sands 

That    floored   the   gullies    now.     But    sprawling 

hands 
Had  marked  the  margin  !    Why  was  that  ?    No 

doubt 

Mike  too  had  tarried  here  to  puzzle  out 
What  sort  of  beast  had  passed.     And  yet  —  how 

queer  — 

JTwas  plain  no  human  feet  had  trodden  here ! 
A  trail  of  hands !    That  throbbing  in  his  brain 
Confused  his  feeble  efforts  to  explain ; 
And  hazily  he  wondered  if  he  slept 
And  dreamed  again.     Tenaciously  he  kept 


126      THE  SONG  OF  THREE  FRIENDS 

His  eyes  upon  the  trail  and  labored  on, 
Lest,  swooping  like  a  hawk,  another  dawn 
Should  snatch  that  hope  away. 

A  sentry  crow, 

Upon  a  sunlit  summit,  saw  Talbeau 
And  croaked  alarm.     The  noise  of  many  wings, 
In  startled  flight,  and  raucous  chatterings 
Arose.     What  feast  was  interrupted  there 
A  little  way  ahead  ?    Twould  be  the  bear! 
He  plodded  on.    The  intervening  space 
Sagged  under  him ;   and,  halting  at  the  place 
Where  late  the  flock  had  been,  he  strove  to  break 
A  grip  of  horror.     Surely  now  he'd  wake 
And  see  the  morning  quicken  in  the  skies ! 

The  thing  remained  !  —  It  hadn't  any  eyes  — 
The  pilfered  sockets  bore  a  pleading  stare ! 

A  long,  hoarse  wail  of  anguish  and  despair 
Aroused  the  echoes.    Answering,  arose 
Once  more  the  jeering  chorus  of  the  crows. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


